Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt)
Julie Dawn Cole literally wrote the book on being a former Willy Wonka star, with the former actress publishing I Want It Now!: A Memoir of Life on the Set of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in 2011. Cole, who keeps up active social media accounts, is happy to keep close to her bratty character Veruca Salt, even maintaining the Twitter handle @RealVerucaSalt.
Cole continued acting after Willy Wonka, most notably appearing on the TV drama Angels and the soap Emmerdale. She also worked at one point as a fitness trainer. Nowadays, she works as a psychotherapist at a hospice with families and children suffering from illnesses, something she says she “really enjoy[s].” Cole, who says she still occasionally keeps in touch with the other children from the movie, regularly makes convention appearances and keeps talking to fans about the original film on social media.
Julia Winter (Veruca Salt)
The newer movie’s Veruca Salt has been much, much quieter than her earlier counterpart since the film came out. Julia Winter, whose only acting credits are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the video game based off the movie, has kept entirely out of the public eye since the film was released.
Rumor has it that Winter, who was picked for the part of Veruca while at a theater school in London, is training to be a doctor in Sweden, where she was born. While the rumor mill also says that she is BFFs with costar AnnaSophia Robb, Winter has yet to emerge and confirm any details about what she’s up to. You can’t fault her for wanting to leave the spotlight and live a normal life.
Denise Nickerson (Violet Beauregarde)
Denise Nickerson’s most notable pre-Willy Wonka role actually has an odd connection to the 2005 remake: Nickerson played Amy Jennings and Nora Collins on the TV soap opera Dark Shadows, a cult hit which ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. The show was adapted for the big screen in 2012 by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory director Tim Burton, starring the new Wonka, Johnny Depp. Aside from that, the actress had also appeared on Broadway and in The Neon Ceiling before landing the part of gum chewer Violet Beauregarde. Nickerson, the most veteran of the movie’s child stars, said she was excited for the chance to work with other kids on Wonka, saying, “When I got the script I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s going to be kids and chocolate. How cool can that be?'”
Nickerson continued acting for a while after Wonka, eventually moving from New York to California when she was 16, something she called “probably the worst career move I could have made” because child labor laws prevented her from working as much as 18-year-olds, who were close enough in age to land the same roles. During that time, she filmed projects like Smile and The Brady Bunch, landing her final role in Zero to Sixty just before she turned 21.
Nickerson said she decided then that she wanted to go get a non-acting job, and told TMZ in 2011 that she was working as a financial analyst for an aerospace company. Nickerson claimed that one of the company’s satellites was actually involved in finding Osama Bin Laden, so there’s that.