Melissa Gilbert called for an industry push for “real, substantive change” in the treatment of young performers following the death of Hayden Panettiere on Aug. 16.
In an essay titled “Enough Is Enough” posted to her Substack on Saturday, Gilbert mourned Panettiere, Daveigh Chase and Michelle Trachtenberg — three former child actors that have died within the past year. Gilbert, whose breakthrough role came at the age of 10 playing Laura Ingallas in NBC’s “Little House on the Prairie,” wrote that “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. When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong.”
Gilbert called out the “misogyny that drives the media” and how mobile phones have further collapsed privacy for celebrities, particularly young women. She also underlined that “saying ‘no’ is something child actors are discouraged from doing” and shared her personal experiences of continuing to work even through personal trauma, including when her father died when she was 11 years old and just starting out on “Little House.”
“Not one single adult on that set discussed it with me or offered condolences. I later found out that the fear was I would become too upset to work,” Gilbert wrote. “But that set me up for a pattern of working no matter what. I even nearly worked to death a few times … I didn’t want to cause problems or be thought of as unreliable or worse, a diva. That is what we are taught as young actors.”
Gilbert, who served as president of the Screen Actor Guild from 2001 to 2005, also called on the union to develop a “well-funded, far reaching support group” and described the organization’s current young performers committee as “essentially toothless, political and (it) tends to get short shrift because there are always bigger fish to fry.”
“I think if we collectively had the opportunity to sit down with (studio and network heads) we might be able to work with them to lobby for and enact real, substantive change,” she wrote. “Mental health care is available for corporate, tech, public sector and government workers, but for performers it is only available if one qualifies for health insurance based on earnings. We need to work with the studios and networks to establish accessible free mental health support for all child actors as they transition into young adulthood.”
Gilbert’s essay comes several months after her husband, actor Timothy Busfield, was accused of inappropriately touching twin 11-year-old boys while filming on the Fox series “The Cleaning Lady” from 2022 to 2024. Busfield pleaded not guilty in February to four counts of criminal sexual contact of a child. Gilbert has defended her husband amid the case. Busfield sought to have the grand jury indictment against him dismissed in June. His trial is currently set to begin in May.
