Former Child Star Mara Wilson Turned Away from Hollywood and Embraced Audiobooks Because It's 'Where You Can Be Anything' (Exclusive)

Above all, Mara Wilson wants to tell a good story.

Wilson, 38, spoke to PEOPLE about narrating Katherine Applegate's Wombat Waiting, a new book about a dog named Wombat who survived wildfires. Wilson is a former child star, whose credits include 1993's Mrs. Doubtfire, 1994's Miracle on 34th Street, and 1996's Matilda. After 2000's Thomas and the Magic Railroad, Wilson took a hiatus from acting. When she returned in 2012, she began focusing more on voiceover roles, web series and podcasts.

And audiobooks. “I love that you can be anything,” Wilson said of why she enjoys recording audiobooks. She estimates that, so far, she's done about 70 books. “I love that you get to play all the characters.”

Wilson joked that she was born a “theater kid,” and even though she loves singing and performing, her “first love was storytelling.”

“All I ever wanted to do was tell stories, write stories and perform stories. . . . So I think that it makes sense to me that my job now is storytelling,” she said.

She joked that her career as an audiobook narrator is particularly appropriate because of her role in Matilda. She played the title role, a six-year-old girl who finds solace in reading books from the library (and uncovers her own magical powers when one of those books gets damaged).

Wilson said that people sometimes ask her if she would ever go back to Hollywood. “And I say, ‘Well, look, there aren't always roles for women of my specific age and my specific looks and demographic and everything. And I would really have to change myself a lot to be able to fit into Hollywood's mold and I don't really want to do that,' ” she explained.

Though she's worked on friends' projects, “For me, audiobooks and voiceover are places where you can be anything. I've played criminals, I've played a nun, I've played Tinkerbell.”

She loves the “variety” of things she gets to do: horror books, romance books, literary fiction, women's fiction, and everything in between.

“To me, it feels like theater because it's not as literal as being in a movie,” Wilson said. In a romance novel, she might imitate a man's voice in a way that is “evocative enough” to get people to suspend their disbelief. Narrating audiobooks lets her be a part of “really beautiful” books and collaborate with authors. It was her dream to work with Applegate, 69, because Wilson adored her Everworld book series, which she wrote with husband Michael Grant and published between 1999 and 2001.

Wilson, who wrote the 2016 memoir Where Am I Now?, said she's “very fortunate” that most of the books she's read have been “really beautiful, really well-written books,” and even if she's not the exact audience for them, she “could imagine” the people they might speak to.

Reading Wombat Waiting, which was released May 5, Wilson felt like “It was very much for a younger version of myself.” Like Henry in the book, she was “a little afraid of dogs,” but learned that things and people “can change.”

She connected with the story “right away.” She said, “I remember I was having a hard day when I first started recording, and then I started recording and I felt so much better. I just loved being in this world, even though it was a world where sad and scary things were happening.”

Wombat Waiting, and its audiobook, are available now, wherever books are sold.