Mia Wasikowska Is ‘Pretty Content’ With Her Decision to Leave Hollywood

In the early 2010s, Mia Wasikowska was a Hollywood “It girl,” starring in everything from indie darlings to high-profile studio films. But after her 2016 film Alice Through the Looking Glass was deemed a critical and commercial flop, Wasikowska seemed to take an extended and noticeable break from the limelight. In a recent interview with IndieWire, Wasikowska reveals that the choice to step away from the industry was by design: “I want to do more things in life other than be in a trailer.”  

Born in Australia, Wasikowska burst onto the scene in the US as Sophie, a depressed gymnast, in the first installment of HBO’s drama series In Treatment, starring Gabriel Byrne, in 2008. She quickly established herself as one of Hollywood’s most in-demand starlets, racking up lead roles in films like Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre and David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars. Her busiest year may have been 2010, when she starred in the best-picture-nominee The Kids Are All Right opposite Julianne Moore and Annette Bening and also booked the coveted role of Alice in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland franchise, starring opposite Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, and Johnny Depp. 

But while she seemed to be living the dream of many aspiring actors, Wasikowka revealed to IndieWire that life on the Hollywood hamster wheel was ultimately not for her. 

“I didn’t entirely like the lifestyle of going back to back to back. I felt really disconnected from any greater community,” she said. “I was doing it since I had been 17, well more like 15, but really working a lot from 17. I spent 10 to 15 years, completely like, new city, new country, every three months, and it’s like starting school again every few months. Especially when you’re younger, when you don’t have that base, I found that really hard.”

Not only did Wasikowska find the pace to be a poor fit, she wasn’t necessarily fulfilled by the work. “Maybe if the payoff is good and you feel really great doing it, then that’s okay, but I didn’t. So I wanted to establish that for myself on a personal level and have more of a sense of somewhere I belong that’s not just on a film set that ends every few weeks.”

Wasikowska did so by leaving Hollywood and moving back to her native Sydney, Australia, in the late 2010s. She’s still acting, but less frequently and mainly in indie films with auteurs she admires. Most recently, Wasikowska starred as Amy in Mia Hansen-Løve’s critically acclaimed film Bergman Island opposite Vicky Krieps. She returns to the screen this year as Abby, an oceanographer, in the eco-conscious indie Blueback, directed by veteran Aussie filmmaker Robert Connolly and costarring Eric Bana.

“I’m pretty content,” Wasikowska told IndieWire of her decision to step back from Hollywood. “If I can have the best of both worlds, which is dip in and out of it occasionally, I’d be really happy, but I wouldn’t ever be in that place where I was just on a treadmill. I want to do more things in life other than be in a trailer. It’s great, and there are lots of great things, [but] the perception of it is quite different from the reality and it didn’t suit me as a person. You can really lose perspective because you’re treated quite strangely. When that’s your only reality, it’s quite strange.”

While she’s happy to be off the Hollywood treadmill, there is one role that slipped through her fingers that she wished she’d gotten a hold of, per IndieWire: shopgirl Therese Belivet in Todd Haynes’s queer period romance Carol, starring Cate Blanchett. “I was attached to it a long time ago, and then a few things happened, and the shoot got pushed, and I signed on to Guillermo [del Toro]’s film Crimson Peak. So I signed on to that and started having conversations with Guillermo and Carol came back, and they’re like, ‘We’re going!’ And I was like, ‘I can’t now,’ so yeah, it was a bummer.”

The role ultimately went to Rooney Mara, who won best actress at Cannes and was nominated for best supporting actress at the Oscars. “It’s just part of it,” said Wasikowska. “You win some, you lose some.”