TVC E. Hollywood actress Matilda Mara Wilson, has opened up about the troubles that being a child star caused her.
Wilson recalled that she made the mistake of looking herself up on the internet when she was 12 and was horrified by what she found.
“A website called Mr Cranky wrote that I was popping up in every movie these days because I would soon be entering ‘the awkward years, when she’ll be old enough to have breasts, but not old enough to show them legally’,” she wrote.
“I folded my arms over my chest just reading that, and even as an adult it makes me shudder. Who did they think they were, talking about a preteen girl’s breasts?”
And she explained that it was only the beginning, including a fan letter who “wanted my lip print on an index card”: “There was even a rumour on IMDb that I had died of a broken neck.”
Wilson added that her status as a “cute” child star affected her in real life too.
“A boy at my preteen day camp had said to me, ‘You were Matilda? Heh. You’ve gained a little weight since then!’ I went home and cried into a milkshake,” she continued.
“When I was alone, I could admit to myself that acting wasn’t as fun as it had once been. But I had to keep doing it, didn’t I? It was the constant in my life. My family had changed, my body had changed, my life had changed. Sometimes it felt like acting was all I had.”
Earlier this year, Wilson earned wide praise among her fans for speaking out about her sexuality, when she tweeted a series of heartfelt messages about the LGBTQ community.
