Many people who find themselves in the circumstances of a child star lead a difficult life. Others find a way to back away from Hollywood or just adjust to it and lead a life that is within reason.
One child star, who many people know because of her role on the television show, Little House on the Prairie, has backed away from Hollywood. She spent a long time in the spotlight and has decided to age gracefully rather than using various ways of maintaining her youthful looks.
After leaving Los Angeles, Melissa Sue Gilbert would find a way to lead a quiet life in her mountain home. She began to reconnect with herself and has been aging gracefully since that time.
Gilbert was born in Los Angeles and started acting when she was very young in commercials. She started playing the role of Laura Ingalls in the sitcom, Little House in the Prairie when she was only nine years old.
That show started in the mid-1970s and I think everybody who watched TV at the time would watch the show every week. She continued to be seen from time to time in Hollywood, even appearing on Dancing With The Stars when she was 47.
In the 80s, Gilbert was on the red carpet numerous times and was hanging out with some big stars, including Rob Lowe and Billy Idol. She also got married to Bo Brinkman in 1998. They had a son but they divorced in 1994.
Soon after, she married her second husband, Bruce Boxleitner. They were married for 16 years and had a son before divorcing in 2011.
When she was younger, she felt how important it was to keep up with beauty standards in Hollywood. She had cosmetic enhancements, including breast implants, fillers, and Botox injections.
Eventually, those procedures had an effect on her physically and mentally. She said: “I looked at myself in the mirror several years back. 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.”
When she realized that she was just trying to fit in with the perception of Hollywood, she decided it was time for a change. She left Los Angeles in 2013 and got a fresh start.
As part of that fresh start, she married Timothy Busfield and they moved into a home in the Midwest. This was a big move for Gilbert, and she used it to reclaim herself in many ways.
She then decided to stop all cosmetic procedures and in 2015, had her breast implants removed. She found that to be liberating. She also stopped dying her red hair and allowed it to go gray.
She said: “In the five years that I was in Michigan, all of that stopped. I focused on being as physically and emotionally healthy as I could.”
She admits that she has her ups and downs, but she still tackles life one day at a time. These days she is living the best life and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
