'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' made Mia Sara a star. Leaving Hollywood has been freeing.
Though she appeared to be on top of the world as a teen star in the '80s, the truth is that Mia Sara found the Hollywood spotlight uncomfortable. Now, at 58, she's happier than ever, thanks to a quiet home life with her husband, Brian Henson, son of Muppets creator Jim Henson, and kids Dashiell Connery, 28, and Amelia, 21. And this month, the actress returned to the big screen for the first time in a decade, starring as a grandmother in an adaptation of Stephen King's novella The Life of Chuck.
Best known as Sloane Peterson in the John Hughes classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sara enjoyed breakout success with roles in All My Children and the fantasy film Legend, later appearing alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme in Timecop. But after appearing in the short film Pretty Pretty in 2013, she stepped away from acting with no intention of returning — that is, until director Mike Flanagan convinced her to sign onto Chuck.
'I love Mike Flanagan, like really adore him just as a person, and we are friends, and I'm just a huge fan,' Sara tells me for Yahoo Life's Unapologetically series. 'When we met [and had dinner], Mike said, 'Why don't you work anymore?' And I said, 'Oh, it's really complicated,' and he said, 'Would you ever work again? What if I offered you something?'' Although Flanagan joked that Sara would come to 'regret that dinner,' she feels quite differently about agreeing to star as Sarah Krantz opposite Mark Hamill's Albie Krantz in The Life of Chuck. 'It was a really healing experience,' she shares. 'Mike creates an incredibly cohesive and really terrific feeling on set. It felt like really nice closure. It did me a world of good.'
The harmony and inner peace Sara felt on set mirror what she's currently experiencing in her personal life as she nears 60. 'I feel a huge pressure is off to not be comparing myself to people,' she says. Our conversation touches on the power of stepping away from the spotlight, the beauty (and, yes, some "crappy" parts) of aging and how youth isn't all it's cracked up to be. (Spoiler alert: Being 'very young' contributed to Ferris being a 'cringy experience' for Sara.)
What I love about my 50s is that I feel like a huge pressure is off to not be comparing myself to people. And I love the fact that my interactions with people [are] just about me, my attitude, me as a person. I don't feel like I have to get past something anymore with people. [But] there are serious bummers to do with health and pain. So, I'm just looking forward to hopefully remaining healthy and active.
I have a Connemara pony called Rory, and he is the greatest pony on the face of the earth — and I'm not the only person who thinks that. I just feel like as long as I can stay in the saddle, I'm good. And for many years now, I've been using this mindfulness app called Happier. I have found it very helpful. Sometimes, for big swaths of time, I'll do it every day, and then, sometimes, I travel a lot and I drop it for a couple of weeks, but I always return to it. I feel I'm less reactive, more present and more aware. You know, my kids have noticed. And the other really good thing about getting older is I have a sense of how fortunate I am. I have a really great life, and I'm really grateful for it. I think meditation does help with that. Oh, and lots and lots of high-quality therapy!
Yes, aging comes up in therapy all the time. It's a hard thing. There are definitely really crappy aspects to it that I do grapple with in therapy and with my friends. I'm fortunate to have very dear friends for many years, and we're all going through it together, and we've supported each other through some pretty scary stuff. Scary stuff starts happening at my age. I've been lucky, but I have very close friends who've had some serious illnesses. So, all of the support that you can have to help yourself and others through [the challenges of getting older] is beneficial.
A long time ago, I knew this woman, a really good friend of my ex-husband [Jason Connery]. She had been a prima ballerina. I was younger, and I was just complaining about something, and she said, "Look, certain things are not gonna get better than this moment. And you're gonna look back on this moment, at whatever physical thing you're complaining about or feeling critical or judgmental of. So, just enjoy the ride." Enjoy the ride. I haven't thought about that in years, but that's something that I would tell my daughter or my son's wonderful girlfriend.
But the other thing is that I've noticed that nobody really follows advice. I feel like if you feel comfortable, you could freely give advice, but never expect them to actually [take it], because we have to learn ourselves. We all have to learn things the hard way. I do.
Everyone feels critical of themselves. I've never met anyone who says, 'I'm so perfectly happy with the way I look and how I feel I'm being perceived.' One of the important things to know is that you don't have control over how people are gonna feel about you. So, the thing is to focus on yourself and how you feel about yourself and also how you treat other people. It's so much more important to be kind and to be compassionate as a human being than to focus on your appearance. And that's what my husband and I have tried to model. I would worry about it around middle school when [my daughter's friends] were all endlessly on social media, but my daughter wasn't that into it. So that was lucky.
I'm really working toward trying to give myself grace. Especially because of this movie that's coming out [The Life of Chuck], and there are all these retrospective blurbs, and they put a picture of me now, and then they put like all these pictures through time, and it's like, 'I'm melting!'
But when I was younger, I always found older women very beautiful. So, when I look in the mirror, I see myself, and I like the way I look. [But it can be] harder when, after a long time, I'm having to confront myself onscreen. That's a very different experience, which is a little challenging. And if you have been considered attractive and beautiful or whatever, and it's a part of your identity, it's hard to let it go. But it is actually really freeing to feel like no one's looking at me.
I understand what people mean about being invisible. I don't feel invisible. I just don't feel like I have to put out anymore. It's nice. I can just present myself as myself, and my interactions with people [are] about who I am. I don't feel like I'm being judged as much because of what I appear to be. I think it's possible to feel more and more aligned with who you are as you get older. I like people not looking at me. That was not always very comfortable for me.
How did you deal with that as a teen, especially when you were very much in the spotlight for ?
I don't think I did very well with it. I was not comfortable. I wasn't mature enough to really take advantage of it. I was really young. I'm a very introverted person. I did not have the greatest time making that movie, because I was in the most awkward stage of my actual adolescence. I was very out of my element and depth. I didn't have that high school experience. So, I felt really out of it. I was younger than the other main cast members [Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck and Jennifer Grey], and they were all a lot more experienced than I was. And it showed in my behavior. When I look back on it, it's a very cringy experience for me. That's sadly how I feel about the movie. I absolutely recognize the durability of it, and I'm really grateful to be in it, and I appreciate the appreciation of it, but the truth is that it was a really bad moment for me.
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