North Stars‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ star Lisa Jakub reveals why she left acting
Remember the broody teen from "Mrs. Doubtfire"? The alien abductee's daughter in "Independence Day"? The dictator's eldest kid in "Beautician and the Beast"?
That was Toronto-born actress Lisa Jakub, and despite going AWOL after appearing in the 2000 TV movie "The Royal Diaries: Isabel -- Jewel of Castilla," the 34-year-old former child star has revealed where she's been all this time on her new blog.
The Huffington Post stumbled upon Jakub's blog last week.
"Not wanting to leave us confused as to her whereabouts, Jakub has quenched our desire to follow her post-child star moves by creating a blog in which she provides updates on her life after Hollywood," wrote Matthew Jacobs on Friday.
Jakub admitted it was "a surprise" to find herself in the publication, and it appears HuffPo's characterization wasn't as accurate as she would have liked.
"Since the Huffington Post seems to think that my blog is about 'quenching' people's desire to know my every move, I though I'd update you that I am currently in my kitchen, putting away groceries," she wrote on Facebook on Sunday. "Check back in about 20 minutes when I'm likely to 'reveal' that I'm in the upstairs hallway, organizing laundry."
In her biography on the social networking site, Jakub calls herself "a retired actor" and describes herself now as "a writer, yogi, wife and dog-mom with a serious travel addiction." According to her LinkedIn profile, she is currently completing a memoir about her life as a child star and her subsequent departure from Hollywood.
Jakub began acting at age 4 in Toronto and carved out a career for 18 years before leaving Los Angeles "under the guise of following the man I loved to Virginia. Luckily, the man I loved really was in Virginia, so it all worked out and we lived happily ever after in our own version of a Hollywood ending." According to IMDB, Jakub married a man named Jeremy in Italy in 2005, and in 2010 she graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in sociology.
In a blog post from March 22, Jakub revealed why she left Hollywood, despite many people thinking she was in an enviable position.
"You’ve probably left a job before. Why did you leave?" she asked. "Probably because you didn’t enjoy it anymore. Maybe something about that job didn’t feel authentic to you or fit in with what you wanted from life. There were probably parts of your job that you really liked, but one day, when you made your pro and con list, the con side was longer. Maybe you had done the job for 18 years -- like I had. Maybe it was time to do something new. That’s why I left my job."
She noted that acting "wasn't awful" but that "it just wasn't fun" for her in the end.
"So, I decided I should leave, before I became one of those alcoholic/eating disorder ravaged/drug addicted train wrecks of a former child actor," Jakub wrote. "I had no desire to be a cautionary tale."
Funnily enough, Jakub's "Mrs. Doubtfire" co-star Mara Wilson also left acting and now works as a playwright. The two of them recently reunited -- and read all about it on her blog.
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