Melissa Gilbert has spent decades in the spotlight living in Los Angeles. But when she found herself caught up in the need to keep looking young, she knew it was time to leave.
During an interview with Fox News, the 60-year-old actress shared the moment she realized that her focus on vanity was all-consuming.
“I looked at myself in the mirror several years back,” the “Little House on the Prairie” star said. “I was living in Los Angeles, and I did not recognize who I was. I had overfilled my face and my lips. My forehead didn’t move. I was still dyeing my hair red. I was driving a Mustang convertible. I was a size two in an unhealthy way. I looked like a frozen version of my younger self—and that’s not who I was.
“I was stuck. I could feel myself fighting it. And I said to myself, ‘It’s time to age.’ I had to leave Los Angeles to do that—not Hollywood—Los Angeles specifically.”
After their wedding, Gilbert and her husband, Timothy Busfield, moved to his home state of Michigan, where “The Miracle Worker” star felt she could finally age.
“I stopped coloring my hair,” she said. “I had [my] breast implants removed. I decided to just be the best, healthiest version of myself without this pressure to look a certain way, and it paid off in a huge way.”
Raising Awareness for Pancreatic Cancer
In October, Gilbert announced her partnership with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network in honor of dear friends Michael Landon and Patrick Swayze, who died battling the disease.“This is the thing that killed two of the strongest, most extraordinarily extraordinary physical specimens of men I'd ever known in my life,” she told People Magazine. “Athletic, talented, I mean, you name it.
“And to see something like that take them the way it did. ... And it’s not just the person going through it. I’m watching a whole family suffer along with both of these men as they are suffering in a way that is indescribable.”
Gilbert’s lifestyle brand Modern Prairie is releasing a capsule collection this November in honor of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. The products—including women’s and children’s bonnets, pocket squares, and a signature pie carrier—will have purple features, the official color of pancreatic cancer awareness. All of the collection’s earnings will support PanCAN.
“My work with PanCAN is a passion of mine and important to me because of the people I’ve lost—whom I’ve known and loved—to pancreatic cancer,” Gilbert said
“It can be a scary world when you think about all that stuff that’s out there. So why shouldn’t we all put our heads together, put our pocketbooks together, put our hearts together, and do whatever we can to eradicate this scourge that is cancer, and especially pancreatic cancer.”
Born on May 8, 1964, Gilbert is best known for her role as Laura Ingalls on the TV series “Little House on the Prairie.” She made her debut on the show at age 10 in 1974 and continued her role until its finale in 1983. She also starred in 1979’s “The Miracle Worker” and the 1983 television film “Choices of the Heart” and competed in “Dancing with the Stars” in 2012.
Gilbert married actor and director Busfield in 2013 and released her memoir “Back to the Prairie” in 2022.
