Matilda's Bruce Bogtrotter quits Hollywood to become a doctor

Child star Jimmy Karz, famed for his role as Bruce Bogtrotter in Matilda, has waved goodbye to Hollywood and entered a whole new career.

We're all familiar with the scene from the 1996 film, where Bogtrotter is forced by Ms Trunchbull to eat a massive chocolate cake in front of his entire school, which marked Karz's major acting debut.

He then went on to star alongside George Clooney in a 1998 episode of ER, before securing a role in The Wedding Singer.

Similar to his Matilda co-star Mara Wilson, Karz decided to turn his back on fame. He attended the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine where he graduated as a doctor in 2017.

"Through gardening, I learned a little bit about biology and chemistry, enough to realise I wanted to delve more into science," he said back in 2015.

"I went back to school to study biochemistry, which led me to medicine. I liked osteopathic medicine’s focus on helping the whole patient, and I was interested in learning manual techniques to help patients."

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Speaking about his famous Matilda scene, he told The Do: "That scene took about three weeks to film … I had to be on set all day, and I had to wear the same outfit every day. The chocolate was already encrusted on this shirt I was wearing.

"For continuity’s sake, every day I had to have the chocolate painted on my face the way it was painted on the day before.

"I despised the smell of chocolate for a few weeks after that. I realised then that acting is not easy. There’s a lot of skill and professionalism involved.

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