Growing Up in the Shadow of “That Girl from Matilda”
Being famous before social media might sound easier, but it wasn’t.
Mara has said fans used to track down her home address, send letters, even show up outside her school.
“I loved acting,” she wrote later, “but I hated fame.”
When her classmates Googled her name, they’d find strangers debating her looks or her childhood body.
Imagine being 13 and reading comments about your appearance on IMDb.
That experience shaped her later activism. “I realized,” she said, “how we sexualize and scrutinize kids who should never have been treated like celebrities.”
She wasn’t wrong — and she was saying it long before #MeToo.