Mara Wilson has revealed creepy 50-year-old men sent her love letters when she was a young child star in Matlida.
The actress, now 33, was just 10 when she found fame in the 1996 hit family film.
But she says she felt ashamed to felt ‘ashamed to be sexualised’ after being thrust into the spotlight.
Mara, who also starred in classic movies like Mrs Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street, wrote in The New York Times how pressured she’d felt to “seem to be as normal as possible – whatever it took to avoid my inevitable downfall”.
Now she now opened up about how she was made to feel growing up and how she wished things were different.
Some of the questions she was asked in interviews disturbed her (Image: five)
The star believes there were those that sexualised her image and she “hated it”.
Mara told the publication: “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, I felt ashamed.”
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Mara compared her journey with others that found fame as teenagers, who were then ‘exploited’ to make their image more sexual, like Drew Barrymore and Britney Spears.
“The way people talked about Britney Spears was terrifying to me then, and it still is now,” she wrote. “Her story is a striking example of a phenomenon I’ve witnessed for years.”
She was sickened at 50-year-old men writing her love letters as a child (Image: FilmMagic)
She says that sometimes she was asked inappropriate questions in interviews despite mainly appearing in family films.
Mara said being grilled on if she had a boyfriend as a child, for example, crossed a line.
“Hollywood has resolved to tackle harassment in the industry, but I was never sexually harassed on a film set,” she said in the article.
“My sexual harassment always came at the hands of the media and the public.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
