Where Is Ariana Richards Now? Jurassic Park's Lex Murphy, Painter

By CelebPaid Research · Updated October 7, 2026 · 8 min read

Ariana Richards at GalaxyCon Richmond in March 2026. The actress who played Lex Murphy in Jurassic Park is now a professional painter based in Oregon.Image via Wikimedia Commons

She was the kid who hacked the park's security system while a raptor breathed down the hallway. Ariana Richards, who played Lex Murphy in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993), was one of the biggest child stars of the 1990s — and then she did what few child stars manage: she quietly became someone else entirely. Today she is a professional painter in Oregon, an award-winning portrait and landscape artist whose work hangs in galleries rather than multiplexes.

This is the story of how Lex Murphy became Ariana Richards, artist.

The Peak: Lex Murphy and the Summer of 1993

Born in 1979 in Healdsburg, California, Richards was acting before she was ten — her first job was a 1987 appearance on The Golden Girls alongside Betty White. But it was Jurassic Park that made her famous worldwide. As Lex Murphy, the granddaughter of park founder John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), she shared the screen with Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum, and anchored some of the film's most iconic sequences — including the kitchen scene with the raptors, a masterclass in child-actor terror.

She had already shown her range before the dinosaurs: she played Carol Wetherby in Prancer (1989), the girl whose belief in a wounded reindeer anchors the film's emotional core, and Mindy Sterngood in Ron Underwood's creature feature Tremors (1990), holding her own against giant underground Graboids at age ten. She picked up several Young Artist Awards along the way, establishing herself as one of the most reliable young performers of her generation before she was a teenager. After Jurassic Park she reprised Lex in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and kept working through the decade — Angus, Boy Meets World, Empty Nest — with her last acting project being the 2013 TV movie Battledogs.

The fame, she later admitted, came at a cost. Telling the Daily Mail in 2015, she recalled that after Jurassic Park came out she was "catapulted into being known worldwide overnight," and that was when her private life shifted in a big way. The spotlight never quite suited her — the easel did.

Why She Stepped Away: The Easel Was Always There

Unlike many child stars who discover a passion late, Richards had been painting since she was twelve, when she began studying classical drawing and painting at the Art Center College of Design. While her acting career ran in parallel through her teens, her art education was the throughline: she earned a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art and Drama, with distinction, from Skidmore College in 2001, then continued her instruction at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

From around 2000 onward, she focused increasingly on painting, building a career as a working artist while largely leaving Hollywood behind. She never slammed the door on acting — she has said she would consider the right script — but the easel won.

The Second Act: Award-Winning Painter in Oregon

Richards now paints landscapes and portraits from her studio in Oregon, working in a style she describes as rooted in the classical influence of the Old Masters and the dynamics of the Impressionists — Monet, John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn. Her artist biography calls her voice "Poetic Realism": portraits that capture fleeting gestures, landscapes and seascapes that "encapsulate the beauty and light of a moment in time."

The art world noticed. In October 2005 she won first place in the National Professional Oil Painting Competition for her painting Lady of the Dahlias. She is a member of the Portrait Society of America, the Oil Painters of America, and a mentor member of the California Art Club — one of the youngest artists to earn that distinction. Art critics have called her "one of the most celebrated portrait artists of our time," and her family tree runs deep in the craft: she is a descendant of the Renaissance painter Carlo Crivelli.

She sells originals and prints through her website, GalleryAriana.com — including, in a nod to her past, a watercolor of Lex Murphy from the famous kitchen scene titled "Raptor Vision Lithograph." In 2023 she shared a 30-by-40-inch oil painting of a T. rex crashing through a museum: the dinosaurs never quite left her work.

Her personal life followed the same low-key pattern. She married Mark Bolton in Oregon in January 2013, and the couple have a daughter. On social media she describes herself as a "painter, actress, mother... and I happen to be a vegetarian."

A Painter's Painter: Style, Influences, and the Fan Connection

What separates Richards from celebrity-turned-hobbyist painters is the rigor of her training and the seriousness of her practice. She names historic painters such as John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Émile Friant, and Emil Carlson among her inspirations, and she has been mentored by some of the finest names in contemporary Impressionist art. Her work has been featured in art magazines, and she has spent years building a collector base — a 2009 Art of the West profile noted she was "attracting an impressive number of collectors" with her work.

She also maintains a warm, deliberate connection with the Jurassic Park fandom that made her famous. She attends fan conventions — photographed at GalaxyCon Richmond in March 2026 — where she meets the generation that grew up terrified and thrilled by the kitchen scene. Her Instagram blends both lives: new paintings beside throwbacks to the set, including a 2022 reunion photo with The Incident co-star Susan Blakely. In a 2013 interview she summed up her dual focus: "I like to paint people out in locations they really enjoy doing something spontaneous."

That balance — a serious fine-art career that never denies the dinosaur in the room — is the key to her second act. She didn't run from Lex Murphy; she just made sure Lex wasn't the whole story.

Could Lex Return? The Jurassic World 5 Rumors

In September 2026, rumors circulated that Lex and Tim Murphy might return in a future Jurassic World installment. Those rumors remain unconfirmed by any studio — but Richards has always said a return would come down to the script. Given that she never formally retired from acting, the door she left open in 2013 is still ajar. Whether or not she ever faces a raptor on screen again, her second career is already complete on its own terms.

The appeal is obvious: the original Jurassic Park kids are now in their forties, and nostalgia-driven casting has brought back legacy characters across the franchise. Joseph Mazzello, who played Tim, has remained active in acting, which keeps the speculation alive. But Richards has built a life where she doesn't need the call — and that may be exactly why fans would love to see her take it.

Then vs Now

Ariana Richards traded the multiplex for the gallery and never looked back. The kid who outran raptors now chases light on canvas — and by every account, she's exactly where she wants to be. Her story is a quiet rebuke to the idea that child stardom has only two endings. There is a third: the easel was there all along, waiting in the corner of the frame, and she simply walked over to it. From Skidmore's studios to an Oregon farmhouse studio, from Lex Murphy's keyboard to a painter's palette, Richards built the rarest thing in Hollywood — a second career that doesn't need the first one to justify it.

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