Mara Wilson is best known for her role as Matilda in the 1996 film adaptationof Roald Dahl’s classic, where she played an extraordinary 6-year-old whostood out from her family and friends. In her real life, Wilson said she feltdifferent from those around her as well.
Now 35 years old, the former child actress appeared on Mayim Bialik ‘sBreakdown podcast where the two discussed Wilson’s early career on camera.Despite starring in notable films including Mrs. Doubtfire, Miracle on 34thStreet and Matilda Wilson recalls the onset of anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and the death of her mother as the defining parts ofher childhood.
“I was always very worried from a very young age. I worried about death, Iworried about sickness, I was that kind of worrier. And it was strange becauseI was either, like I said, a very sort of upbeat extroverted kid or I washaving an anxiety attack,” she explained to Bialik. “When I was in thirdgrade, that was really when all the s*** hit the fan. Third grade was when mymother was sick, I had just finished filming Matilda. I started having panicattacks about things like my pet hamster escaping.”
Wilson wasn’t aware of what those moments of worry or panic actually meant atthe time. She recalled “hearing the word anxiety” but never in conjunctionwith her behavior.
“I think that my mother was probably afraid because she knew that mentalillness ran in her family,” Wilson said. “And she was also just sort of like ajust suck it up type mom anyway. So she was just kind of like, ‘OK get overit, you’ll be fine, deal with it.’ And she had cancer, she was dealing withher own stuff at the time.”
The panic attacks weren’t the only thing that Wilson was dealing with at thatage, but instead only supplemented the rituals that she created with herundiagnosed OCD. “I started washing my hands all the time, so much so that myhands were always red and chapped and raw and my mother would have to putsalves and ointments and all these kinds of … all of her home remedies on themto make sure that they wouldn’t hurt so much anymore,” Wilson explained. “Itwas a really hard time for me and I knew that it was weird. That was thething. I knew that I was strange, I knew that this was something that otherpeople didn’t have and I started having panic attacks at school . I had afeeling that this was not something that other kids had.”
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Although Wilson didn’t know what she was struggling with, she had theawareness to speak with her guidance counselor at school.
“I would go to the guidance counselor like every day but they didn’t reallyseem to know what to do with a child with anxiety, a child with obsessions andcompulsions,” she said. “I think about it and the way that I talked about mysymptoms and the way I described them, if I heard a child describe them todayI would immediately be like, even if I didn’t have the extensive experience, Ithink if anybody heard the way that I was talking, they would immediately saythat sounds like OCD. I think we know a little bit more about OCD now becauseit’s 25 years later but at the time, I guess people didn’t really have theknowledge that it could even happen to children.”
She did enough research herself to know that as a young girl, she related todescriptions of the disorder.
“I looked up OCD with the rudimentary internet that we had at the time andwhat I knew in the library and encyclopedia and such and I was like, ‘Oh, Ihave this.’ And I went to my guidance counselors, I said, ‘I think I knowwhat’s wrong with me,'” she recalled.
Wilson also had a studio teacher working with her on a movie set who seemed tovalidate her struggle. “I confessed to her that I was weird and I didn’t tella lot of people about it. But I told her I was like, ‘I’m really weird.’ She’slike, ‘I’m a little weird too.’ And I was like, ‘No, I get really anxious, Iget really scared.’ She was like, ‘I have anxiety too, it’s OK.’ And it mademe think, oh OK there are adults who have this. Not everybody is in controlall the time and they deal with it, they find ways to deal with it.”
Wilson shared that it was difficult to get her dad, who was a widow and singlefather after her mom’s death, to “accept that there was something wrong withme.” She said, “I think parents want to blame themselves for it. And theydon’t want to damn their kids with a diagnosis.”
Ultimately, it was starting therapy at about 12 years old and getting anevaluation that changed the course for Wilson going forward.
“I think I was on Zoloft at the time. I’m on Lexapro now and it helps becauseI couldn’t function without it. And I was diagnosed with severe OCD and Icouldn’t have functioned without it,” she said. “That diagnosis saved me.”
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