Melissa Gilbert, who was on the show "Little House on the Prairie," is leaving Hollywood. The actress, who played Laura Ingalls Wilder in the popular historical drama, has given up her glitzy life for a shabby mountain cabin.
She and her husband, Timothy Busfield, just bought a 14-acre property in the Cat Skill mountains in upstate New York for $98,000. It's only 20 minutes from the famous Woodstock location, so she can live a much more relaxed life there and get away from the pressures of being in the public eye.
Gilbert was just a child when she was in the 1974 Western show. How did she go from being a beautiful Hollywood starlet to a woman who lives alone in the mountains? In honor of her move, FEMAIL decided to look back at what she and the rest of her Little House castmates have done since the show ended almost 40 years ago. Some of them did not have the easiest journeys. From tax evasion to drug problems, the cast of Little House on the Prairie has had its fair share of problems.
The show followed a family who lived on a farm in Minnesota in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. It ran for nine seasons and ended in 1983.
It was made by Michael Landon, and it was based on the best-selling book of the same name by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Landon, Gilbert, Karen Grassle, and Melissa Sue Anderson were some of the actors who were in it.
Even though the show dealt with serious topics like alcoholism, poverty, racism, cancer, and even rape, it was considered good for the whole family to watch, and it became a fan favorite quickly. It was the third most popular show in 1974, and millions of people around the world watched it.
But what have the actors been doing since the show ended almost 40 years ago? What is the cast of Little House on the Prairie doing now?
Charles Ingalls played by Michael Landon
Landon was born in Queens, New York, on October 31, 1936. After seeing his mother try to kill herself in front of him, he didn't have the best childhood.
As a child, he was good at throwing the javelin, which helped him get a scholarship to the University of Southern California. But while he was in school, he tore a ligament in his shoulder, which ended his sports career.
Agent Bob Raison noticed him while he was working at a gas station across the street from Warner Bros. studios. This was the start of his career.
I Was a Teenage Werewolf, which came out in 1957, High School Confidential, God's Little Acre, and Bonanza, where he played Little Joe Cartwright, were some of his first roles.
After Little House on the Prairie, where he played Charles Ingalls, was a hit, he made the western drama series Father Murphy. Then, from 1984 to 1989, he was in Highway to Heaven.
He has also worked on the NBC show Love is Forever, the coming-of-age film Sam's Son, the PBS show The Electric Company, and the movie Where Do Pigeons Go to Die. He was also on a game show called Match Game.
Landon started a successful singing career in addition to his work as an actor, director, and producer. Gimme a Little Kiss (Will 'Ya' Huh)/Be Patient With Me was his first single. It came out in 1957 and was a huge hit.
He put out a few more songs and went on a few world tours over the course of his career.
He has been married three times and has nine kids. His first wife was Dodie Levy-Fraser. They got married in 1956 and split up in 1962. Mark and Josh are the names of the two sons they took in. Then, in 1963, he married Marjorie Lynn Noe. Together, they had four children: two daughters, Leslie and Shawna, and two sons, Michael Jr. and Christopher.
He also took in Cheryl, Noe's daughter from her first marriage. However, in 1982, he and Noe broke up. Then, in 1963, he married Marjorie Lynn Noe. Together, they had four children: two girls named Leslie and Shawna and two boys named Michael Jr. and Christopher. He also took in Cheryl, Noe's daughter from her first marriage. However, in 1982, he and Noe broke up.
After that, he tied the knot with Little House on the Prairie makeup artist Cindy Clerico in 1983. Since they started seeing each other while he was still married to Noe, the media didn't like it.
They had a daughter, named Jennifer, and a son, named Sean, and were together until his death.
In 1991, while on a ski trip in Utah, the actor said he had terrible headaches. He was then told a few days later that he had pancreatic cancer. He was 54 when he died on July 1, 1991.
Decades after his death however, Landon's name was dragged into controversy when his on-screen wife, played by Karen Grassle, accused him of bullying her on-set.
In her new book, Grassle talks about the "disgusting" jokes Landon would tell on set, how he would make fun of the way she looked, and how he "insulted" her by saying she shouldn't get paid more than the child actors on the 1974-started show.
The actress called him "amazing and multitalented" and said that he had a controlling side.
She said, "He was very tense, but he had to carry the weight of the show on his shoulders."
But she doesn't think that was a good reason for some of the things he did.
The relationship seems to have gotten worse after Grassle asked for a raise for the second season. At the height of her popularity, she was making $2,000 to $4,000 a week.
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Karen Grassle, who played Caroline Ingalls, was born in Berkeley, California, on February 25, 1942. She is now 80 years old. She got a BA in English and Dramatic Arts from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965.
Then, she got a Fulbright Fellowship to go to London to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 1968, she did her first play on Broadway. It was called "The Gingham Dog." She was also in the Broadway play Butterflies Are Free.
Before she became famous for playing Caroline Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie, she had a few small roles, such as in the TV movie Emily, Emily in 1977, The President's Mistress (with Beau Bridges and Susan Blanchard), the drama Battered in 1978, and the comedy Harry's War.
After that, she didn't slow down. She got parts in the NBC TV movie Battered, Crisis in MidAir, Between the Darkness and the Dawn, Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote, and Not to Forget, which also starred Cloris Leachman, Louis Gossett Jr., Tatum O'Neal, George Chakiris, and Olympia Dukakis.
She then moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she helped start Santa Fe's Resource Theater Company. Then she went to Louisville, Kentucky, where she worked for a long time with the Actors Theatre of Louisville.
In 2006, she moved again, this time to San Francisco, where she worked with San Francisco Playhouse and acted in plays like "Cabaret" and "Driving Miss Daisy."
In November 2021, she published a book called Bright Lights, Prairie Dust. In it, she told many shocking things about her time in Little House.
She said that, even though she and Landon seemed to be in love on the show, that wasn't the case in real life.
Grassle talked about how Landon would make "disgusting" jokes on set and how he would sometimes make fun of the way she looked.
She also said that he "insulted" her by saying that she shouldn't be paid more than the child actors on the show.
She was married three times. From 1966 to 1970, she was married to Leon Rossum. From 1982 to 1987, she was married to James Allen Radford. From 1991 to 1997, she was married to Dr. Scott Sutherland.
Melissa Gilbert, who plays Laura Ingalls Wilder, was born in Los Angeles, California, on May 8, 1964. She is now 58 years old. She was adopted the day after she was born by the late actor and comedian Paul Gilbert and his wife, the actress Barbara Crane. They later got a divorce.
Before she got the part of Laura in The Little House on the Prairie, she was in a lot of TV commercials as a child.
After that ended, she kept acting. She was in the drama film Choices of the Heart, the western Sylvester, the 1986 film Choices, the thriller Ice House, the crime show Sweet Justice, the drama Switched at Birth, which starred Sean Patrick Flanery, Then Came Jones, Secrets and Lies, which also starred Ryan Phillippe and Juliette Lewis, and the 2019 film When We Last Spoke.
During the 1990s, she also did the voice of Batgirl on Batman: The Animated Series.
In the musical version of Little House on the Prairie that ran in 2008 and 2009, she played Caroline "Ma" Ingalls.
A doctor told her that she had been working on the musical with a broken back for months after she told him she had back pain. She then had surgery to replace a disk in her lower spine. In 2009, she wrote an autobiography in which she talked about her past problems with drugs and alcohol.
Gilbert said that she realized she had a drinking problem when she passed out and woke up in a dog bed one night while a friend was over for dinner. In 2009, Today said that the incident caused her to go to therapy and attend AA meetings. She was on season 14 of Dancing With the Stars, where she fell and hit her head. She was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a concussion, but she kept going in the race and ended up in fifth place.
In 2016, she ran for Congress in Michigan's 8th district, but she later dropped out because of health problems. When it came out that she owed $360,000 in back federal taxes and $112,000 in back California state taxes, she was criticized. She is said to have worked out a payment plan with the IRS since then.
In the 1980s, she may have had a one-night stand with Tom Cruise. She was also briefly engaged to actor Rob Lowe. After that ended, she started dating Bo Brinkman, who is the cousin of famous actor Dennis Quaid.
She married Brinkman in February 1988, and a year later, they had a son named Dakota. In 1992, they split up.
After that, she started dating Bruce Boxleitner. After three dates, they finally got married in January 1995.
Michael Garrett Boxleitner was born to them in 1995. People say that she named him after her co-star on Little House on the Prairie, Landon.
She broke up with Boxleitner in 2011, and she married Busfield two years later. They are still together today.
Gilbert, who has had a lot of plastic surgery over the course of her career, recently told Fox News that she moved to the mountains in New York to be free in her own skin.
Here I am now, without hair dye, fillers, implants, or Botox. I only worry about myself. I do my best to eat well. A lot of what I drink is water. And because of that, I'm really enjoying getting older,' she said. "[Getting old] is a fight uphill. In the end, everybody loses. It just doesn't fit with who I am now or what I'm doing with my life. It's a waste of time and energy.
"I had to find a place in myself where I could stop trying to be what other people wanted me to be or feeling like I had to be what they wanted me to be and just be myself."
She also told People magazine, "I finally woke up and went," about the move "What should I do? I have a carrot-top shape, and I'm not happy about it."
The 58-year-old calls her new home, where she raises chickens and grows her own food, "The Cabbage." It was there that she got the idea for her second book, Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade. During the height of the pandemic, A Life Rediscovered was published.
Gilbert said that she had always known that she "loved being outside" and "around animals" and liked the "sweet, simple things in life."
"Now, our lives are simple, and there's something sweet about that." She told Fox News, "I love stillness and living my life in a peaceful place because I am simple."
"Once we got up here and got our land, we started to think about what we could do with it. Then lockdown happened, and it all came out of me." There was a person who wanted this [new life] more than anything.
Melissa Sue Anderson, who plays Mary Ingalls, was born on September 26, 1962, and grew up in Berkeley, California. She is 59 years old. She did a lot of commercials for brands like Mattel and Sears when she was young.
In 1972, she made her first appearance on screen in an episode of Bewitched. She also showed up in one episode of The Brady Bunch as a guest star.
She was cast as Mary Ingalls in The Little House on the Prairie when she was 11 years old. In 1978, she was nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Leading Actress in a Drama Series.
After seven seasons, the actress left the show and went on to star in movies like The Loneliest Runner, which was based on Landon's autobiography, ABC's Which Mother Is Mine?, for which she won an Emmy Award, TV movie Survival of Dana, slasher movie Happy Birthday to Me, spy series The Equalizer, Murder, She Wrote, and Veronica Mars, which starred Kristen Bell.
In 2010, she wrote a book about her life called The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House. She was also an assistant producer on Landon's last project before he died, the TV movie Where Pigeons Go to Die.
In 1990, she got married to Michael Sloan, who made TV shows. They have two kids together, a daughter named Piper and a son named Griffin.
Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush took on the role of Carrie Ingalls. Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush, who are 51 years old and look exactly the same, grew up in Los Angeles, California. On May 25, 1970, they were born. Before they played Carrie Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie, the two stars played Jill Hayden together in the TV movie Sunshine.
Lindsay went on to star in one episode of the crime drama Matt Houston after her time on the show. She and her sister also did commercials for Double Mint Gum, Mattel, and KFC.
As for Sidney, she was in the movie Hambone and Hillie, which came out in 1983. Then, both of the women stopped acting so they could focus on their schooling. They left Santa Monica High School in 1988.
William "Rocky" Foster was a horse breeder who Sidney married. They were together for nine years until he died in 2009.
Lindsay married Daniel Sanchez in 2014. They met on the set of Little House on the Prairie. Since Daniel lived nearby, she met him while filming at the Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley.
Alison Arngrim was Nellie Oleson, who was played by Alison Arngrim, who is 60 years old, was born on January 18, 1962, in New York City. Her mother was a famous actress who was best known for voicing Casper on Casper the Friendly Ghost. Her father was a Hollywood manager.
She later said that her older brother Stefan, who was also a child actor, raped her from the age of six to nine.
She first worked as a model, and then she started showing up in TV commercials. Little House on the Prairie gave her her first big screen role as Nellie Oleson.
She first tried out for Laura, then for Mary, before she was finally cast as Nellie, the bad guy.
She kept acting after her time in Little House was over. She was a guest star on The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, starred in the Western I Married Wyatt Earp and the Christmas movie Make the Yuletide Gay, and was a regular panelist on the NBC game show Match Game-Hollywood Squares House. She also put out a comedy album called "Here's Amy," in which she played first daughter Amy Carter, and became a successful stage actress in France.
In 2010, Arngrim wrote a book called Confessions of a Prairie B: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated. It was about her time on the show Little House.
She has been married twice. From 1989 to 1993, she was married to a man named David Spencer. In 1993, she married Robert Paul Schoonover, and they are still together.
Source: Dailymail.co.uk