Why LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE Star ‘Had to Get Out’ of LA
By Movieguide® Contributor
LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE star Melissa Gilbert is opening up about the pressures of living in Hollywood and her journey of escaping them.
“When you live in Los Angeles, it’s like living at the mall when you work at the mall,” she said in an interview with PEOPLE. “Literally, everyone is in the business. When you walk into a restaurant, every head turns to see who walked in. Everybody’s always looking, curious, competing and that’s a really difficult thing, especially for a female actor. It puts a lot of pressure on staying thin and staying young, and really it makes it hard to feel comfortable in one’s own skin, because [of] the aging process.”
Gilbert, known for her role as Laura Ingalls, explained how the pressures are almost impossible to avoid.
“No matter how much we push it downstream, it’s inevitable,” she continued. “So are you going to age comfortably and happily? Are you going to fight it, be unhealthy and feel like there’s something wrong with you for aging and that you’re defective because you’ve gotten older?”
In 2013, Gilbert and her husband left L.A. and moved to Michigan. It was there that the actress deconstructed some of her Hollywood-acquired habits. She stopped doing Botox and fillers and even had her implants removed.
She noted that the change in her life has been a blessing.
“I had to get out of there [L.A.], because it felt like I was not being authentically myself,” she explained. “In the five years that I was in Michigan, all of that stopped. … I stopped everything and just focused on being as physically and emotionally healthy as I could. And I think that shows, ‘Yes, I’m aging, but it’s not a curse — it’s a blessing.’”
Gilbert since has moved to a little mountain town in New York to continue living the simple life. Movieguide® previously reported on Gilbert’s new lifestyle:
The actress and her husband, actor and director Timothy Busfield, made a home in the Catskills, leaving Hollywood behind and embracing nature.
“I grew up on a set that was a farm,” Gilbert laughed. “I got to play it out quite a bit and then go to our nice home in Encino at the end of the cul-de-sac with all of our modern conveniences. But I’ve always loved being in the outdoors. I’ve always loved being around animals. I think this was who I always was at my core. I just happened to grow up in urban cities.
“Once we got up here, once we got our land and started to look at all the things we could do with it, and then when lockdown happened, it unleashed all of this stuff inside me,” she continued. “There was a person who was dying to have this [new life]. I still can’t believe this is what my life is like now. It’s heaven. I’m just so blessed.”
Focusing on remodeling the Catskills cottage and tending her garden left Gilbert little time to think about things like plastic surgery or fillers.
“Our lives got very, very simple,” Gilbert described. “Our lives are simple now, and there’s a sweetness to that simplicity. And with that simplicity comes a real love for stillness and living my life in a peaceful place. That means not fighting a natural process. Fighting a process that is as natural as aging is the opposite of peaceful.”
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