10 Actors You Didn't Know Have Retired
8. Mara Wilson
It's a little crazy to think that someone would retire from acting at the age of just 13, but that was indeed the case for Mara Wilson. Well, at least initially.
Having famously appeared in Mrs. Doubtfire, Miracle on 34th Street and then headlined 1996's Matilda, the young Mara announced her retirement in 2000 when she was only 13 years of age. She reportedly got sent the script for Donnie Darko shortly after making this decision, but turned down the opportunity to audition for Richard Kelly's twisted sci-fi thriller masterpiece.
Wilson would eventually return to acting in the 2012 webseries Missed Connection, and she's since made sporadic appearances here and there - most notably voicing Jill Pill in BoJack Horseman - but the main focus of her career these days is in her writing work.
To date, Mara has penned several plays that have become successful productions, while she also told her own story of child fame and the fallout of that with her 2016 read, Where Am I Now?: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame.
On why she stepped away from acting in 2000, Wilson has openly discussed how the body image-obsessed world of Hollywood made her question her desire to remain in that particular bubble.