Mara Wilson

“The celebrity aspect is nothing short of ridiculous, and auditioning is brutal and dehumanizing. Every time I see a pretty young girl on the subway reading sides for an audition, my only thought is, 'Man, am I glad I'm not doing that anymore.' I never feel nostalgia, just relief.”

“I had people in 'Entertainment Weekly' talking about how they wanted to throttle me because they thought I was too disgustingly cute, as if that were my fault, you know, as if that was my fault, not the fault of directors and producers and such.”

“The idea of living forever makes me uncomfortable, and at this point I've lived long enough and seen enough Twilight Zone episodes to know that there's always a catch.”

“I don't have any plans to pursue film acting. It's not my thing anymore, if it ever was. Yes, I do still act sometimes. But when I do, it's with people I know and trust, people who respect me as a person and appreciate what I have to offer.”

“People who meet me as an adult are often surprised that I'm alive and have never been in prison or rehab. Sometimes they're disappointed I'm not cooler.”

“I'm originally from southern California, so I, like, say 'like', like, a lot. I've been trying to scrub any traces of Valley Girl from my speech since I moved to New York, but it's, like, totally way harder than anyone thinks, you know?”

“The best times I had on film sets were the times the director let me express myself, but those were rare.”

“Not many child stars make it out of Hollywood alive or sane, and at any given time there are at least three former ones having very public breakdowns.”

“Film can be exciting, but more often, it's tedious.”

“The next time a former child star is in the news, look at the age at which he or she started performing. Then imagine making a life-changing decision at that age. Chances are good he or she wasn't the one who made it.”

“I think that when I was child, acting was mostly just a hobby for me. It was something that my parents encouraged me to think of the way that my brothers thought of their cross-country classes, or my little sister to dance classes and art classes, and it was something like that for me.”

“That's my suggestion for kids who want to act, by the way: Make sure it's really your choice, get out of it when it stops being fun, and get an education.”

“Acting is something I did when I was a kid. I do act sometimes in friends' projects, but when I do, it's just for fun. It is actually a hobby for me now. I do still love stage acting, but the day-to-day process of being an actor is so exhausting and so taxing.”

“I think if I could do it over again - as much as I loved meeting the people I did on the films after 'Matilda' - I wish that I had stopped after 'Matilda.' I wish that I had just focused on my own life for a while.”

“I consider my relationship with acting in Hollywood as sort of a mutual breakup. Through puberty, Hollywood didn't really want me anymore, and I was like, 'Yeah, I don't really want you, either.'”

“From then on, I vowed, I would never say anything negative about a woman's appearance. it had nothing to do with them as a person and it wasn't something they could easily change. If I didn't want looks to matter, I would have to stop talking and acting as if they did.”

“I would like people to know me for who I am, especially since I think people have a very skewed image of me. I was playing a lot of cute characters, a lot of little girls; I was objectified. And I don't want people to think of me as that because it's not who I am, and because I've seen a lot of hostility towards that image.”

“When people asked me what I was going to do when I grow up, I always said, 'I'm going to be a writer. I'm going to write screenplays. I'm going to write books. I'm going to write plays. That's what I'm going to do.'”

“I didn't want to be a former child actor for the rest of my life, although in some ways I suppose I am. I am going to be that.”

“Feminism has been slandered as a way to give ugly women greater prominence in society. And, in a way, it is. Feminism is for ugly women. For beautiful women. For all women. Women of all colors, ages, and shapes. It's about giving people an equal chance regardless of their gender. Judging them for what they do and not for what they are.”