Movies Comedy Movies
Paramount Pictures
ByVictoria Miller
Mia Sara made a name for herself as a young actor in the 1980s and '90s. She shot to fame after playing Ferris Bueller's (Matthew Broderick) girlfriend, Sloane Peterson, in John Hughes' blockbuster comedy film, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Sara capped off her successful stint as the school-skipping teen with a steady stream of movie and TV roles, until her acting career came to a screeching halt in the 2010s.
Sara's resume actually started becoming a bit spotty after her 1996 wedding to Jason Connery (yes, the son of Sean), per IMDb. The marriage produced one child — and a divorce — but her second marriage to Brian Henson (the son of Muppets creator and puppeteer,Jim Henson) seems to be what really spawned her retirement from acting. After giving birth to a second child in 2005, Sara only logged five more credited acting roles in her career. In a 2010 interview with Total Film, Sara described herself as "mostly retired." She was 43 years old at the time.
"Now I'm a mother with a really noisy, difficult house to maintain!" she told the publication. "I did a film last January ['The Witches Of Oz'] where I played an evil witch, which was fun. But you know, when it's two o'clock in the morning and you're wearing a corset and tights in a freezing-cold farmhouse in Connecticut, you do kind of think, 'Well, this is why I'm retired! I can't really do this anymore!'" She returned to the screen for the 2013 short film "Pretty Pretty," and that remains her most up-to-date acting project at the time of this writing.
Furthermore, while Sara has given some memorable performances in hit movies, she doesn't look back at her career highlights as fondly as her fans do.
Mia Sara doesn't have fond memories of her most memorable roles
"Ferris Buller's Day Off" is regarded as a comedy classic by many movie fans, but the project came about at a weird time in Mia Sara's life. The actress was 18 years old when she played Sloane in John Hughes' beloved teen movie, making her the only actual teenager among the core cast members. This made Sara feel out of place, as she explained in the aforementioned interview with Total Film.
According to Sara, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" has forever documented her awkward adolescent years, so you can understand why she doesn't have the fondest memories of working on the movie. "The cast were all lovely but mostly my experience was feeling very out of my depth and, you know, flailing. That's just the honest truth," she said. "I wish I could say it was a lot of fun but it wasn't for me. I know, it's a bummer –- but it was a bummer to me at the time!"
After "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," Sara was cast alongside Tom Cruise in Ridley Scott's 1985 fantasy epic, "Legend." That wasn't a pleasant experience either, as a fire devastated the studio and put everyone's lives at risk. "All of a sudden the sky was black... you can't believe it's gone. Everyone was crying. It was just gone," Sara recalled in an old interview with "Eye on the Movies."
Sara's acting experiences have been hit or miss, to say the least, but leaving Hollywood has allowed her to pursue other passions and vocations throughout the years.
Mia Sara totally switched careers after she became a mom
Vince Bucci/Getty Images
Motherhood has taken center stage for Mia Sara since she put acting on the back burner, but she has enjoyed a second career that's doubled as her creative outlet. In 2016, Barrelhouseintroduced Sara as a column contributor. At the time, the outlet noted that the former movie star's poetry had already been published in several magazines. Sara said she was drawn to writing poetry as a way to help people "feel better." "If you're in distress and looking to literature, it's much easier to read a poem than a book," she explained. She also said she liked to write about her kids and "being old."
In her bio featured on the electronic poetry journal Mudlark, Sara explained that she began writing "as a way to survive night shoots" when she was an actor. "It sort of worked," she revealed. "Now it's words that keep me up all night."
Sara's Instagram handle is, fittingly, @miasarawrites, and she sometimes shares her poetry on her social media page — as well as pics of her all-grown-up kids. But her bio on her official website pretty much says it all regarding her decision to switch careers. "Mia Sara used to be an actress, but recovered her senses and now she writes," the blurb teases.
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