Washington [US], August 23 (ANI): Melissa Gilbert has spoken out about the need for better protection and support for child actors following the deaths of former child stars Hayden Panettiere, Daveigh Chase and Michelle Trachtenberg, according to PEOPLE magazine.
As per the publication, the Little House on the Prairie actor, 62, shared her thoughts in an essay published on Saturday, calling for changes in the way young actors are treated as they grow up in the entertainment industry.
Gilbert said she did not know Panettiere personally and had only worked briefly with Chase and Trachtenberg. However, she said their deaths felt personal because she had also grown up as a child performer.
"I did not know Hayden personally and only worked briefly with Mishy and Daveigh. It feels personal because I was them," Gilbert wrote.
She also named several other former child stars, including Tatum O'Neal, Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Jodie Foster, Drew Barrymore and her sister Sara Gilbert. She said women who started their careers as child performers share a strong connection.
"We are all members of the same tribe: Female Former Child Performers, and when one of us dies, it runs through all of us like an electrical current," Gilbert wrote, as per PEOPLE. "When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong."
Gilbert said she feels the entertainment industry's habit of putting children to work and then leaving them to deal with the pressures of fame as adults is becoming worse.
She also spoke about what she called "Doctor Show Syndrome", saying young actors are often expected to continue working even when they are physically or emotionally unwell.
"I can't tell you how many times I worked while horribly sick, injured or worse. My father died when I was just eleven years old and I was back working on Little House within months. And not one single adult on that set discussed it with me or offered condolences," she recalled.
Gilbert said she later learned that people were worried she would become too upset to work. She believes that experience taught her to keep working even when she was not well.
She recalled having an emergency appendectomy while filming a movie in Oregon and returning to work only three days later because she felt guilty about affecting the shooting schedule.
"A few days after that I got sick with a horrible fever. I continued to film a few more days until I finished my work, flew home and was immediately hospitalised, hallucinating from the fever. I was on the verge of sepsis," Gilbert shared.
She said young actors should not feel that they have to work through physical or emotional pain simply to avoid being seen as difficult.
"These young professionals are children, and we should make sure they are allowed to be children," Gilbert wrote. "They should be allowed to say 'no.' Not push through physical or emotional pain. Not be made to support their entire families. And most certainly not to be followed everywhere they go by cameras, phones and prying, exploitive eyes."
Gilbert's comments come seven months after her husband, actor Timothy Busfield, was indicted by a grand jury in New Mexico on four counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor. The charges relate to alleged incidents in October 2022 and September 2023.
Busfield has pleaded not guilty to all charges. His trial is scheduled to begin in May 2027. (ANI)
Melissa Gilbert speaks out on better protection for child actors after Hayden Panettiere's death
