Back in 1993, Mrs. Doubtfire was a smash hit. The family comedy took on heavy topics like divorce, kids stuck in the middle, and a dad so desperate to stay close that he threw on prosthetics and a Scottish accent. Robin Williams got the laughs, sure, but each one of the Hillard kids mattered too. Chris, Natalie, and Lydia were completely relatable. Thirty-three years later, it’s Lydia, played by Lisa Jakub, who still sparks the most curiosity. Where did she go? Well, she hasn’t vanished, despite what some publications would have us believe.
Lisa Jakub was 14 when she played the oldest Hillard sibling. She had the eye rolls and the teenage exhaustion down. After the movie exploded, she didn’t disappear. She continued working. Some of it, as she later joked, involved “a bunch of cheesy made-for-television movies that mostly just aired in Denmark.” But that wasn’t all she did.
Three years after Mrs. Doubtfire, Jakub landed Independence Day. She played Alicia Casse, daughter of Randy Quaid’s doomed fighter pilot. You remember the scene and the line. She remembers it too. “I remember being in my dining room and auditioning for an alien movie and having my mom play a boy asking me if I wanted to die a virgin, and thinking I had an incredibly strange job,” she told THR.
She was already a pro by then. Jakub started acting at the young age of four alongside legends like Robin Williams, Fran Drescher, and Pierce Brosnan. From the outside, it looked perfect. From the inside, however, Jakub felt it wasn’t for her. “I wasn’t passionate about being an actor,” she said years later. “I was like 21, 22, and really felt like I was living somebody else’s dream.” People told her she was lucky, but she really didn’t feel happy.
So she walked out. Goodbye Hollywood. She moved to Virginia, went to college, and figured out who she was when she wasn’t pretending to be someone else on a film set. Writing helped. A blog followed in 2013. Then books. You Look Like That Girl in 2015. Not Just Me in 2017, where she talked openly about anxiety and depression. “So many people are struggling silently,” she said. “There is no need for shame.”
But Jakub didn’t cut ties with her acting past. It just didn’t define her anymore. When someone recently ran an online headline claiming she had “completely vanished,” Jakub roasted it on Instagram. “Big news, everyone. I’ve just found out that I have ‘completely vanished’.” She hasn’t.
She’s 46 and still busy. But with other things. She’s a yoga teacher, a speaker, a writer and she runs Blue Mala and Mission Flexible, working with military veterans using meditation, writing, and yoga to help with PTSD. She often speaks about mental health because she lived it.
She’s also still funny online. Every July 4, she posts about Independence Day. “29 years ago,” she wrote recently. “Still really damn worried about what’s out there.” One fan replied they’d prefer the aliens at this point.
She also reunited with her Mrs. Doubtfire siblings in 2018, again in 2022, and once more in 2024. When she talks about Robin Williams, the respect is clear. He even tried to stop her from getting expelled from high school during filming.
Lisa Jakub didn’t disappear. She changed jobs. We’ve all done that. The only difference is people still remember her face after all these years. People still remember all her work. And she’s okay with that now.
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