Then & Now

Melissa Gilbert, actor

IN THE 1970sno one could blubber on the box better than Melissa Gilbert. As Laura Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie, the child actress seldom missed an opportunity to turn on the waterworks and tug at the heartstrings of millions of viewers. The lamb is sick? Boo-hoo! Locusts have destroyed the crops? Boo-hoo-hoo! The Waltonsare beating us in the ratings? Waaaahh!

On Sunday afternoons, Gilbert’s sobs would regularly waft out from Irish TV sets, blending with the smell of Sunday roast, as we followed the adventures of television’s favourite pioneer family. We grew up wanting our own little house on the prairie – which might well explain the property bubble.

But eventually we grew up, and so did Melissa Gilbert. The adopted child of actor/comedian Paul Gilbert and dancer Barbara Crane, Melissa showed early form as an actress when she appeared in a dog-food commercial with Lorne Green, star of Bonanza. In 1973, when NBC were making a pilot of a new series loosely based on the prairie memoirs of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Melissa auditioned for the part of Laura, and found herself co-starring with another Bonanzaactor, Michael Landon, whose daughter attended the same school as Melissa. Landon became a mentor to the young actress and, says Gilbert, taught her how to cry on cue. She became the youngest actress to get a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

Laura wept her way through nine years of Little House on the Prairie; by the time the series ended in 1983, she was all grown up, and being romantically linked with everyone from Tom Cruise to John Cusack and Billy Idol. She had a "tumultuous" affair with bratpacker Rob Lowe beginning when both were 17. In her 2009 autobiography, Prairie Tale, she reveals all about their torrid on-off romance, during which she had a miscarriage.

From the princess of the prairie, Gilbert became the queen of the TV movie and mini-series, starring in such heartwarming fare as Shattered Trust: The Shari Karney Story, Choices of the Heartand Switched at Birth. She was nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of Helen Keller in The Miracle Workerand starred in several Little Housespin-off movies. Behind the scenes, however, Gilbert was acting out her own dramas with drugs and alcohol.

In 2001, she won her biggest role since Little House on the Prairie– president of the Screen Actors Guild. She served two terms as guild president, during which she railed against filmmakers who made movies abroad to avail of cheaper production costs.

But she could never escape from that fictional abode where she spent much of her acting childhood. In 2009, she returned to the Little House on the Prairie, playing Laura's mother, Ma Ingalls, in a musical stage version that toured the US. Earlier this year, she announced her separation from her husband, actor Bruce Boxleitner, who she married in 1995. She also auditioned for a role in the new series of Dallas, but alas, South Fork remains out of reach. Boo-hoo!