Child actress Mara Wilson says media was complicit in sexualizing her dating back to when she was just 5 years old: 'The lies Hollywood tells about little girls'



Actress Mara Wilson — famous for her roles in "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Matilda," and more — says that Hollywood and the media were complicit in sexualizing her when she was a child.

What are the details?

In a New York Times op-ed titled "The Lies Hollywood Tells About Little Girls," Wilson — who is retired from Hollywood and is now 33 years old — said that she and her parents worked hard to avoid Hollywood's sexualization, but ultimately failed.

Writing that she intentionally hadn't ever "appeared in anything more revealing than a knee-length sundress" as a child actress, Wilson says people sexualized her anyway.

"This was all intentional: My parents thought I would be safer that way," she explained of her demure style as a child. "But it didn't work. People had been asking me 'Do you have a boyfriend?' in interviews since I was six. Reporters asked me who I thought the sexiest actor was and about Hugh Grant's arrest for soliciting a prostitute. 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. Before I even turned 12, there were images of me on foot fetish websites and photoshopped into child pornography."

"Every time," she continued, "I felt ashamed."

Wilson added, "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."

What else?

Wilson's opinion piece comes on the heels of a documentary on the life of superstar performer Britney Spears, which documented her media sexualization, legal battles, and more.

The explosive documentary, "Framing Britney Spears," also explored how Hollywood used Spears to sell an image of young sexuality and her subsequent mental breakdown.

"Many moments of Ms. Spears' life were familiar to me," she added. "We both had dolls made of us, had close friends and boyfriends sharing our secrets, and had grown men commenting on our bodies."

Wilson said that she's able to empathize with the trials Spears endured and said that while the #MeToo movement was necessary to effect change for future generations, those who lived through what she and her contemporaries did as little girls in Hollywood were irrevocably damaged.

"We're still living with the scars," she admitted.

Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman says she felt unsafe while being sexualized as a child actress



Actress Natalie Portman, 39, says that she often felt unsafe as a child actress when being sexually objectified by older men.

What are the details?

According to the New York Post, Portman — who has been working in the entertainment industry since she was at least 12 years old — said that she feels being sexualized as a child in Hollywood crippled her sexuality as an adult.

During a Monday podcast with fellow actor Dax Shepard, Portman revealed that being sexualized as a child actress made her afraid.

"Being sexualized as a child took away from my own sexuality because it made me afraid," the Oscar winner told Shepard during his "Armchair Expert" podcast. "So many people had this impression of me that I was super serious and prude and conservative as I got older. I consciously cultivated that because it was a way to make me feel safe."

When Portman was 16 years old, she was offered the role of "Lolita" in a production based on Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 book of the same name. She said she turned down the role due to the explicit underage sexual content.

"At that age you have to do your own sexuality, and you have to do your own desire, and you do want to explore those things," she said. "But you don't feel safe necessarily. You build these fortresses."

She explained, "I was definitely aware of the fact that I was being portrayed — mainly in kind of journalism around when the movies would come out — as like this Lolita figure. ... I've actually talked about it, I wrote a thing about it for the Women's March a few years ago about how being sexualized as a child I think took away from my own sexuality because it made me afraid. It made me feel like the way that I could be safe was to be like, 'I'm conservative and I'm serious and you should respect me and I'm smart and don't look at me that way.'"

Portman added that as a child actress, she was forced to build virtual fortresses in order to keep herself safe.

"You're told as a girl and a woman that you're supposed to want to [be objectified], and that it's a good thing, people finding you attractive or people thinking you're sexy," she continued. "These words that we use around young girls in particular — and then it's complicated because it doesn't necessarily always make you feel good or feel safe. You do have your own sexuality and your own desire, and you do want to explore things, and you do want to be open, but you don't feel safe necessarily when there's, like, older men that are, like, interested. You're like 'No, no, no, no.'"