Melissa Gilbert Reveals Moment She Realized She Needed to Leave LA
By Movieguide® Contributor
Actress Melissa Gilbert left Los Angeles several years ago and never looked back.
“I looked at myself in the mirror several years back. I was living in Los Angeles, and I did not recognize who I was,” she admitted to Fox News. “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.”
“…it makes it hard to feel comfortable in one’s own skin, because [of] the aging process,” she previously said of living in Hollywood.
The LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE went into detail about the changes she chose to make after leaving.
“I stop coloring my hair. 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,” she recalled.
Gilbert shared how she found her identity outside of who Hollywood said she was.
“I finally found my feet as a woman, fully, 100 percent strong in my own knowledge, in my own accomplishments. Everything got easier. And a bonus? I have a lot more free time not staring in a mirror, sitting in a dermatologist’s chair, or sitting in a hair chair.”
Embracing aging has also deepened her marriage.
“I think as I’ve aged, we’ve just fallen more and more in love with one another, which is such an extraordinary gift,” Gilbert said of her marriage to Timothy Busfield. “And I think that’s for so many reasons. I think for him, I am much more myself and so much more comfortable in my own skin because I’m through menopause because I am at this age. I love that we are together now at this point in our lives.”
Leaving LA doesn’t mean she’s stepped away from acting, though. Gilbert joined the cast of WHEN CALLS THE HEART for its twelfth season.
The season premiere will air on Sunday, Jan. 5, at 9/8c on Hallmark, and a special guest will make the season even better.
Melissa Gilbert, best known for her role as Laura Ingalls in LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, will play Georgie McGill, “who shares a surprising past with one special Hope Valley resident,” and will appear in two episodes.
READ MORE: WHEN CALLS THE HEART SEASON 12 IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
