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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The reason why Mick Jagger’s children won’t get a cent of his multimillion dollar fortune
Even though Sir Mick Jagger is one of the most well-known rock stars in the world and has amassed enormous money, he has recently seemed to imply that he will not be transferring his enormous wealth to his offspring.
Since the Rolling Stones’ 1962 London formation, the 80-year-old leader has been a part of the music industry.
The group has since put out 122 singles, 31 studio albums, and 77 music videos. After all of this, the group has sold more than 200 million records worldwide and has been named by Billboard as the second-greatest musician of all time (after The Beatles).
They’ve been together for an incredible 61 years, making them one of the longest-running musical ensembles ever!
Thus, it should come as no surprise that the band members have made a lot of money. Jagger too.
But as he recently stated in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, that doesn’t imply his kids will automatically become wealthy.
The father-of-eight informed the publication that, contrary to recent trends among well-known musicians, he currently has no plans to sell the band’s post-1971 catalog. This procedure essentially involves a musician selling the copyright to song recordings, or both, depending on the terms of the agreement.
Performers that have sold the rights to their music, such as Bob Dylan and Katy Perry, have made multimillion dollar deals. Bob Dylan made a whopping $300 million by selling Universal Music his whole discography, and it has been alleged that Dolly Parton wants to follow suit.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Jagger stated that he would not be giving his children any money from The Rolling Stones’ music catalog sale. “The kids can live comfortably without $500 million. Come on, he urged.
However, if a deal is struck, Jagger would rather see the funds donated to a worthy cause. You might make a difference in the world, he said.
The singer of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is married to five different women and has eight children total, ages six to fifty-two. Born in 1970 to Jagger and his then-partner Marsha Hunt, the oldest is 52-year-old Karis.
During Jagger’s relationship with Bianca Jagger, to whom he was married from 1971 until 1978, another daughter, 51-year-old Jade, was born.
Actress Jerry Hall, who dated Jagger from 1977 to 1999, was the girlfriend of the musician. Together, the two had four children: Elizabeth, 39, and Georgia May, 31, as well as James, 38, and Gabriel, 25.
Lucas, 24, is Jagger’s eighth child and was born during his relationship with model Luciana Gimenez Morad. Then, in 2016, Jagger’s current partner Melanie Hamrick, a former ballerina and choreographer, gave birth to Deveraux, his youngest child, who is six years old.
Oh my god. That’s a sizable family, so there are plenty of individuals to divide an enormous fortune among!
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