SignalHub-Mara Wilson Shares Why Matilda Fans Were "Disappointed" After Meeting Her IRL

For Mara Wilson,SignalHub playing Matilda was not always magical. 

In fact, the actress recently reflected on the pressures she felt as a child star, specifically around being able to live up to her titular character in the 1996 film Matilda when meeting fans.

"I saw that they were disappointed that I wasn't as smart, pretty, nice, as they expect you to be," Mara told The Guardian in an interview published Monday May 15. "I think they were expecting me to be Matilda, and she's wonderful, but she's not real."

"She's brilliant in every single way. She's smart, and kind and powerful," the 35-year-old continued of Matilda. "Then they met me, this nerdy, awkward teenager who got angry sometimes, but couldn't even channel her anger into powers."

And she admitted it often felt like she was living in her character's shadow, much like "the way you would with a fabulous older brother or sister."

Mara added, "I was never going to live up to that."

This kind of personal pressure followed the Good Girls Don't author well into adulthood. 

"There's still this fear I have: if [fans] actually knew who I was, would they really like me?" she mused. "The answer to that is some would and some wouldn't."

And it's a sentiment Mara knows not many are able to fully understand.

"People don't realize how much constantly talking to the press as a child weighs on you," she explained. "When you have fans, you can no longer be yourself when you're out in public, and there were times that I was having a bad day, because I was an emotional teenager."

This is not the first time Mara has spoken publicly about the difficulties of being a child star. 

She previously described being "sexualized" as a young actress in Hollywood in a 2021 New York Times essay. And the year prior, Mara participated in the 2020 HBO documentary Showbiz Kids, which was directed by fellow former child star Alex Winter.

"It felt very out of control to have everyone know my name and I didn't feel like I could trust anybody," she recalled in the documentary. "That's still a problem that I have now sometimes, because I don't know when people want me because they think I have connections. Or they like me because of an image they have of me as a child."