Why Jurassic Park child star Ariana Richards quit Hollywood for good

She had a starring role in one of the biggest movies of all time – but soon after, this young actress turned her back on Hollywood.

Jurassic Park star Ariana Richards has quit Hollywood and now works as an artist, painting dinosaurs.

The actor starred in the 1993 blockbuster as Lex Murphy, the granddaughter of park founder John Hammond, played by the late Richard Attenborough.

Despite landing the huge role, Ariana decided that she wanted to pursue other passions, and now works as a painter.

Ariana Richards in Jurassic Park.

Now 42, she studied a B.S Degree in Fine Art and Drama at Skidmore College and her art has been featured in art magazines.

According to her website, she draws inspiration from historic painters Monet and Degas.

Her work is award-winning and has been featured in art magazines.

In recent posts, she has shared her work, with her latest being a huge painting of a T-Rex crashing through a museum.

She has also created beautiful landscapes and portraits of people as part of her body of work.

Speaking about how she landed the role in one of the most influential films of the 90s, she said that her audition was top secret.

Richards quit Hollywood to become a painter.

With Sam Neill in Jurassic Park.

Ariana, who was just 12 at the time, was not even given a script to look over before her audition.

Used to the audition process, Ariana told Radio Times: “The casting person just said to me, ‘So, Ariana, we’re going to put you on tape to share with Steven [Spielberg] and you’re going to act like a dinosaur is attacking you.

“’You just have to imagine this is happening and we want you to let loose and scream.’

“That was my entire audition, it was the weirdest audition I’ve ever done in my life!”

-with The Sun

Jurassic Park: What you never knew about the classic film

Casting troubles

New Zealand actor Sam Neill played Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, but he only landed the part after another star turned it down.

As Spielberg revealed at a 30th anniversary screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, he originally offered the role to the Indiana Jones star Harrison Ford.

“Do you know who I offered Jurassic Park to? This guy [gesturing to Ford]. Alan Grant I first offered to this guy.”

Laura Dern, who played Dr. Ellie Sattler, wasn’t convinced that a dinosaur movie was right for her career. But that all changed after chatting to Nicolas Cage who she’d recently finished making a film with.

Sam Neill and Laura Dern both almost didn’t play their iconic roles.

“I said to him, ‘Nic, they want to put me on the phone with Steven Spielberg, but they want to talk to me about a dinosaur movie …’” Dern recalled to Entertainment Weekly.

“And he was like, ‘You are doing a dinosaur movie! No one can ever say no to a dinosaur movie!’ I was like, ’Really?’ And he’s like, ‘Are you kidding? It’s a dream of my life to do a movie with dinosaurs!’ So he was such an ­influence on me.”

Close call

The cast and crew had to literally batten down the hatches on the last day of filming in Kauai when Hurricane Iniki hit the Hawaiian island.

The 130 people involved with the movie huddled in a hotel ballroom for safety as Kennedy desperately searched for a way to evacuate the cast and crew from the island.

Kennedy managed to make her way to Honolulu on a small plane where she bumped into a man she vaguely recognised.

The film shoot, in Hawaii, was not without its problems.

“It was the young man that flew the biplane in Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Steven Spielberg recalled to EW.

“He was the pilot that was in our movie and he just happened to be a pilot of a four-engine 707, a cargo plane and he was between flights. So Kathy arranged with him to send a large plane to the island the next day to take the cast and crew out.”

Director’s anger

Jurassic Park started filming in August 1992 on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. Unfortunately for Steven Spielberg, the post production phase of the movie clashed with Schindler’s List which he’d committed to starting in Poland a few months later.

“I knew I had to be shooting in January [1993] in Poland, and so it came together awfully quickly, to the point that when I finally started shooting … in Poland, I had to go home about two or three times a week and get on a very crude satellite feed to Northern California … to be able to approve T-Rex shots,” Spielberg recalled.

“It built a tremendous amount of resentment and anger that I had to do this,” he added. “That I had to actually go from what [the Schindler’s List cast and crew] experienced to dinosaurs chasing Jeeps. All I can express is how angry that made me at the time.”