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.
Melissa Gilbert calls for protection of child actors
As per PEOPLE magazine, 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.
Melissa Gilbert says Hollywood’s child stars share ‘strong connection’
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. “When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong.”
Melissa Gilbert says ‘pressure of fame’ becoming worse
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.
Melissa Gilbert on shooting despite undergoing appendectomy
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.”
Anna Paquin defends child stars
Anna Paquin also joined in, in calling on Hollywood to protect child actors following the deaths of Hayden Panettiere, Michelle Trachtenberg and Daveigh Chase.“It’s not a coincidence that so many former, specifically pre-sexualized female, child ‘stars’ have profoundly sad lives and untimely ends. We were not as protected by the ‘systems’ that look great on paper, as we are supposed to be,” Paquin wrote on Instagram Friday. She rose to fame at 11 years old with her film debut in 1993’s The Piano, which earned her an Oscar for best supporting actress.“It’s a strange club we belong to and you are worthy of support no matter how our industry made us feel.” She went on to write in the comments, “I’m speaking very specifically about the experience as a child on set that finds themselves prematurely a “sex object”. I’m not implying damage is not done outside of the context of entertainment. But that is a longer post for a different moment. Also I used the women’s initials because I ran out of space. Nothing to be read into. Just logistics.”