As a child, Mara Wilson could not have predicted how beloved her early films would become.

The former child star told The Hard Shoulder that it makes her happy to see parents share some of her films with the next generation.

"I don’t think I understood that I was going to be part of people’s Christmas traditions," she said.

"I just thought acting was fun and it was something I fell into - I didn’t think people are going to be watching my movies 20-30 years from now.

"It does make me happy that people still watch Matilda, Mrs Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street and they've introduced them to their children too."

As a child, Ms Wilson appeared in seven major motion pictures, but when she entered her teenage years, she opted out of acting.

"After a while, I just felt ‘I’m tired of acting’ and there just weren’t many roles for me either," she said.

"So that’s when I started doing things like theatre and comedy and music and writing."

She now has sage advice for children working in entertainment today

"I’ve always told children in the industry, ‘Get out while it’s still fun, or get out the second it stops being fun,'" she said.

Media

Ms Wilson believes the media landscape has changed for the better since her time as a child star.

"The media was not very nice to me to me and I was a child," she said.

"There were articles and reviews talking about how ugly or annoying or stupid I was and that was really hard."

Ms Wilson said her parents would try to shield her from the negative media attention.

"It was a strange time and it was really difficult for me - I think the media has changed," she said.

"There are people who did not like being on film sets, it was tough for them and they were horribly mistreated.

"That wasn’t my situation - my situation was there was a media and a public that didn’t know what they were doing with famous children."

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Featured image courtesy of Mara Wilson.