Mara Wilson, who rose to fame as a child star, stepped away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood years ago. In a new interview, she revealed what it would take for her to return — and made clear she has no interest in doing it. When people ask her whether she would ever go...

Mara Wilson, who rose to fame as a child star, stepped away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood years ago. In a new interview, she revealed what it would take for her to return — and made clear she has no interest in doing it.

When people ask her whether she would ever go back to acting, Wilson told People that she typically says, “Well, look, there aren’t always roles for women of my specific age and my specific looks and demographic and everything. And I would really have to change myself a lot to be able to fit into Hollywood’s mold, and I don’t really want to do that.”

The former actress found fame as a kid, particularly when she played the titular role in Matilda (1996), but also thanks to roles in Mrs. Doubtfire, Miracle on 34th Street and Melrose Place.

Nowadays, Wilson’s career is focused on narrating audiobooks, as well as performing voiceovers and appearing on podcasts. She spoke to People while promoting her latest project, the children’s book Wombat Waiting by Katherine Applegate.

“I love that you can be anything,” Wilson said of her current job. “I love that you get to play all the characters.”

She continued, “All I ever wanted to do was tell stories, write stories and perform stories… So I think that it makes sense to me that my job now is storytelling. To me, it feels like theater because it’s not as literal as being in a movie.”

The former child star, now 38, retired from Hollywood at just 13 years old, and she has spoken out about that deliberate decision several times over the years.

“I’ve had people tell me, ‘The way that you judge yourself, looks-wise, is on this really strange level.’ Well, it’s because I grew up in Hollywood,” Wilson told People in 2016. “I had good experiences there, but I always knew there were girls much prettier than I was, and I knew that I was always competing with them. That has followed me my whole life.”

That year, Wilson published a memoir detailing some of those experiences within and outside Hollywood, titled Where Am I Now?: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame.

Addressing the wordplay in her book’s title in an interview with Happiful in 2019, Wilson said, “I think that when someone is famous and then they’re not any more, people like to construct a narrative around it. Child stars are people that others like to feel sorry for, though I’m not sure why.”

She continued, “Also, I think that when you leave Hollywood people either want to see you as a failure, or as a saint who’s walking away from all the pleasures of life. I think it’s human nature to want to make up a story about things.”

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