By Michaela Gordoni
LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRARIE’s Melissa Gilbert says being grungy helped her land her iconic role.
“I would change into my audition uniform, which was just overalls and a flannel shirt and tennis shoes,” the actress recalled on the “Hey Dude…The 90s Called!” podcast.
“And whatever dirt was on my face at the time or food or whatever, it was just left there,” she said. “My mom would throw my hair into pigtails, and then I’d just go in and sit on the floor and do my homework until they called me in.”
That’s how she looked at her LITTLE HOUSE audition.
“The first audition, it was like a room full of girls with their mom primping and making barrel curls on their fingers, you know, and straightening their pinafores. And I came in all raggedy and dirty and messy,” she said. “It worked.”
Michael Landon’s daughter, Leslie, was the one who told Gilbert she got the role.
“I was at school one day, and I was in the lunch area. And this girl in an upper grade walked over to me, and she said, ‘Are you Melissa?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I am.’ And she said, ‘I’m Leslie Landon. And my dad says you’re gonna be Half Pint.’”
Leslie had heard her father say that at dinner the night before, but she wasn’t supposed to tell Gilbert.
“There were no cellphones, obviously, back then,” said Gilbert. “So, I run screaming to the office and tell them I have to call my mom immediately.”
“Leslie got in so much trouble. We’ve been really close friends ever since that day…That was just the beginning of a friendship that was filled with a lot of misadventures too, for, now, 50 years or more,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert was happy after recently losing a role in an A MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET remake.
“I was really sad, and I remember my dad…I was sitting in the garage,” she said. “My dad used to build furniture when he wasn’t on the road when he wasn’t working. So, I was in his tool shop, and he said to me, ‘Listen, just because you didn’t get this, it’s OK. It just means something better is gonna come along.’”
“I remember crying and saying, ‘There’s nothing better! What’s better?’ And two weeks later, LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRARIE.”
In an interview with CBS SUNDAY MORNING, she said of her time on the show, “I don’t remember it ever not being fun.”
Gilbert, now 61, was living in LA when she realized she had let the local culture influence her too much.
“I looked at myself in the mirror several years back,” Gilbert recalled. “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,” she continued.
“I was stuck,” Gilbert said. “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.”
She and her spouse, Timothy Busfield, moved to Michigan, where they lived for five years.
“I stop 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.
“I finally found my feet as a woman, fully, 100% strong in my own knowledge, in my own accomplishments,” she said.
Since 2019, Gibert has lived on 14 acres in the Catskill Mountains, which she calls “Little House in the Catskills.”
“I love being this age. There are things about it that are not a lot of fun,” she admits.
“I don’t like it when my ankles ache in the morning or my skin’s drier. Aging is not for sissies, but it is certainly better than the alternative,” she said. “And I’ve never felt better in my skin.”
Netflix is currently making a LITTLE HOUSE reboot that started filming this month. It stars Luke Bracey, Skywalker Hughes, Crosby Fitzgerald and Alice Halsey as Laura.
Read Next: Netflix’s Upcoming LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE Adds More Cast Members
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