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Hollywood star Mara Wilson is reflecting on her childhood fame and how it led to her being negatively affected due to the media.
The actor, now 33, who shot to fame as a kid through her breakout role in Matilda, penned an op-ed for the New York Times and looked back on the pitfalls of childhood stardom.
“I saw many teenage actresses and singers embracing sexuality as a rite of passage, appearing on the covers of lad mags or in provocative music videos. That was never going to be me, I decided,” she wrote.
“I had already been sexualized anyway, and I hated it,” she added.
“I mostly acted in family movies — the remake of Miracle on 34th Street, Matilda, Mrs. Doubtfire. I never appeared in anything more revealing than a knee-length sundress. This was all intentional: My parents thought I would be safer that way. But it didn’t work.”
“It was cute when 10-year-olds sent me letters saying they were in love with me. It was not when 50-year-old men did,” she added.
“Before I even turned 12, there were images of me on foot fetish websites and photoshopped into child pornography. Every time, I felt ashamed,” she said.
“Hollywood has resolved to tackle harassment in the industry, but I was never sexually harassed on a film set. My sexual harassment always came at the hands of the media and the public,” she added.
Wilson also compared her unpleasant experience to that of pop icon Britney Spears: “Many moments of Ms. Spears’s life were familiar to me. We both had dolls made of us, had close friends and boyfriends sharing our secrets and had grown men commenting on our bodies.”
“But my life was easier not only because I was never tabloid-level famous, but because unlike Ms. Spears, I always had my family’s support. I knew that I had money put away for me, and it was mine. If I needed to escape the public eye, I vanished — safe at home or school,” she added.
“The Narrative isn’t a story someone else is writing anymore. I can write it myself,” she concluded.