Ariana Richards

The Gelatin Tremor

Ariana Richards was twelve years old when Steven Spielberg decided she was the right person to tremble before a velociraptor. That shot of the green gelatin spoon wobbling in her hand was burned into the retinas of millions of viewers in 1993. But even before that, she had already escaped giant worms in the Nevada desert.

Her real debut came in 1987 with a small role in Into the Homeland. Richards belonged to that breed of child actors who didn't scream because the script demanded it, but projected genuine fear. In Tremors, she played Mindy Sterngood and held her own against Kevin Bacon without flinching.

And then the dinosaur phenomenon arrived.

Filming Jurassic Park meant months of physical work and complex mechanical effects. Spielberg chose her because her scream was the most powerful of all the girls who auditioned. She won several youth awards for that role, and it seemed the industry would keep her in its ranks of teen stars forever.

Paintbrushes Versus Spotlights

In the mid-nineties, her work pace deliberately slowed down. She took part in productions such as Angus in 1995, where she played Melissa Lefevre. But something was changing in her personal priorities as the twentieth century came to a close.

Richards earned a degree in Fine Arts from Skidmore College in 2001. It wasn't the whim of a bored actress. Her ancestors were painters, and she felt that oil paint gave her a sense of control that the movies denied her. So she decided to step away from the Los Angeles studios and seek out the natural light of the North.

The gamble paid off.

Her works began to win national awards for Impressionist painting. In 2005, she took first place in the National Professional Oil Painting Competition organized by American Artist magazine. Her paintings capture landscapes and portraits with a technique reminiscent of the classic masters of the nineteenth century.

The quiet comeback

She never disowned her past in front of the camera. In 1997, she briefly revisited her role as Lex Murphy in The Lost World: Jurassic Park for an opening scene. It was a personal favor to the crew and a way to close a chapter of her life before focusing fully on her painting studio.

In 2013, she agreed to take part in the TV movie Battledogs. She did it out of pure technical curiosity. Since then, her public appearances have been limited to commemorative events or conventions, where fans of the franchise keep asking her to sign photos from that gelatin scene.

It's a firm decision.

Richards runs her own gallery and lives in Oregon, focused on her family. Her studio produces a limited number of canvases each year, which are sold to private collectors for prices that exceed five figures. The catalog of her work available in 2024 shows an evolution toward lyrical realism with a very precise use of glazing in color.