In the early 1990s, the world fell in love with the adorable Mara Wilson, the child actor known for playing the precocious little girl in family classics like Mrs. Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street.
The young star, who turned 37 on July 24, seemed poised for success but as she grew older, she stopped being “cute” and disappeared from the big screen.
“Hollywood was burned out on me,” she says, adding that “if you’re not cute anymore, if you’re not beautiful, then you are worthless.
In 1993, five-year-old Mara Wilson stole the hearts of millions of fans when she starred as Robin Williams’ youngest child in Mrs. Doubtfire.
The California-born star had previously appeared in commercials when she received the invitation to star in one of the biggest-grossing comedies in Hollywood history.
“My parents were proud, but they kept me grounded. If I ever said something like, ‘I’m the greatest!’ my mother would remind me, ‘You’re just an actor. You’re just a kid,’” Wilson, now 37, said.
After her big screen debut, she won the role of Susan Walker – the same role played by Natalie Wood in 1947 – in 1994’s Miracle on 34th Street.
In an essay for the Guardian, Wilson writes of her audition, “I read my lines for the production team and told them I didn’t believe in Santa Claus.” Referencing the Oscar-winning actor who played her mom in Mrs. Doubtfire, she continues, “but I did believe in the tooth fairy and had named mine after Sally Field.”
‘Most unhappy’
Next, Wilson played the magical girl in 1996’s Matilda, starring alongside Danny DeVito and his real-life wife Rhea Perlman.
It was also the same year her mother, Suzie, lost her battle with breast cancer.
“I didn’t really know who I was…There was who I was before that, and who I was after that. She was like this omnipresent thing in my life,” Wilson says of the deep grief she experienced after losing her mother. She adds, “I found it kind of overwhelming. Most of the time, I just wanted to be a normal kid, especially after my mother died.”
The young girl was exhausted and when she was “very famous,” she says she “was the most unhappy.”
When she was 11, she begrudgingly played her last major role in the 2000 fantasy adventure film Thomas and the Magic Railroad. “The characters were too young. At 11, I had a visceral reaction to [the] script…Ugh, I thought. How cute,” she tells the Guardian.
‘Burned out’
But her exit from Hollywood wasn’t only her decision.
As a young teenager, the roles weren’t coming in for Wilson, who was going through puberty and outgrowing the “cute.”
She was “just another weird, nerdy, loud girl with bad teeth and bad hair, whose bra strap was always showing.”
“At 13, no one had called me cute or mentioned the way I looked in years, at least not in a positive way,” she says.
Wilson was forced to deal with the pressures of fame and the challenges of transitioning to adulthood in the public eye. Her changing image had a profound effect on her.
“I had this Hollywood idea that if you’re not cute anymore, if you’re not beautiful, then you are worthless. Because I directly tied that to the demise of my career. Even though I was sort of burned out on it, and Hollywood was burned out on me, it still doesn’t feel good to be rejected.”
Mara as the writer
Wilson, now a writer, authored her first book “Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame,” in 2016.
The book discusses “everything from what she learned about sex on the set of Melrose Place, to discovering in adolescence that she was no longer ‘cute’ enough for Hollywood, these essays chart her journey from accidental fame to relative (but happy) obscurity.”
She also wrote “Good Girls Don’t” a memoir that examines her life as a child actor living up to expectations.
“Being cute just made me miserable,” she writes in her essay for the Guardian. “I had always thought it would be me giving up acting, not the other way around.”
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Sister of Michael Jackson imitates her famous sibling.
American musician and icon Michael Jackson, who passed away in 2009 and altered pop culture history, was renowned for altering his looks. He had a strong interest in cosmetic surgery.
He allegedly received at least a dozen plastic procedures to alter the appearance of his lips, cheekbones, chin, and eye incisions, according to several surgeons. Although he hardly ever appeared in public without a mask in the last two years of his life, many people thought that plastic surgery had damaged his nose.
Jackson himself refuted claims that he underwent cosmetic surgery. He undoubtedly underwent surgery after suffering a nasal fracture. He allegedly transformed his look as a result of a skin condition. The musician’s younger sister Janet Jackson appears to have taken over as his replacement at this time. Fans were shocked to see her at the «Bal de la Rose» event after a long absence. First off, Janet doesn’t appear to be 56 years old. Perhaps the cause is not just genetics, but also the facelift of a seasoned expert.
Second, Jackson’s nose is considerably smaller than it was previously, and the incision around his eye has changed somewhat. Her skin tone has also lightened. But it could only be a carefully designed foundation. In any event, she resembles her deceased sibling in a startling way, according to online users.
Although Janet Jackson was not drawn to the entertainment industry as a youngster, she was forced to pursue it since her father made all of the decisions. She made her stage debut at the age of seven in Las Vegas alongside her siblings and went on to feature in various TV shows. She issued 11 albums, the most recent of which, Unbreakable, came out in 2015. She wed musician James DeBarge when she was 18 years old, but the couple eventually divorced. After her third husband, a millionaire, gave birth to her kid and her second husband, a singer and dancer, divorced her in 2017, Janet was once more alone.
By the way, both during and after the birth of her son, Janet Jackson put on too much weight. She did, however, reduce 50 kg, and now her weight is back to normal.
She had plainly undergone plastic surgery in addition to other alterations. The important point is that Janet does not enjoy it as much as her well-known brother.
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