Melissa Ellen Gilbert was born on May 8, 1964, in Los Angeles, California. She had a unique start in life—at just one day old, she was placed up for adoption by her birth parents, Kathy Wood and David Darlington.
Despite not being born into a family of actors, her journey led her into the heart of the entertainment industry as she was adopted by actor and comedian Paul Gilbert, and his wife, fellow actor and dancer Barbara Crane. But no one could have predicted that she would one day become a star in her own right.
As it often goes in show business, little Melissa Gilbert was involved in the industry from a very young age. Her first job was at the age of just three, in the 1967 film The Reluctant Astronaut. She also featured in a number of television commercials, including one for a dog food brand.
However, in 1973, Gilbert got her big break. She beat out more than 500 other young actresses for the coveted role of Laura Ingalls in the American Western historical drama Little House on the Prairie. She couldn’t have known how much the role would shape her future.
When she was eight years old, Paul Gilbert and Barbara Crane divorced. Barbara later married an attorney named Harold Abeles and the pair welcomed a daughter, Sara Rebecca Abeles, known in the industry as Sara Gilbert.
Sara went on to have a successful career in her own right, but it was Melissa who found her own way into the spotlight first. Cast as a fresh-faced, buck-toothed, nine-year-old to play the middle child in the Ingalls family, Melissa became Laura and acted alongside veteran actor Michael Landon, who played Laura’s father, Charles Ingalls. This was only the beginning of a wild ride for Melissa Gilbert.
This was her big break, and all before she reached middle school. But along with all the regular trials and tribulations of being a child actor came a troublesome personal life that threw difficulties her way from a young age.
On February 13, 1976, at the height of the success of Little House on the Prairie, her adoptive father Paul Gilbert died after taking his own life. At the time, she was told he suffered from a stroke.
While playing Laura, Gilbert grew close to her on-screen parents. When her real-life family tragedy struck, Michael Landon who played her father Charles, stepped in to become a surrogate dad.
She became close to the entire Landon family through the difficult time and even had a short fling with Michael Landon’s son, Michael Jr. By the time she reached her teens, still playing the 19th-century farmer’s daughter, Melissa Gilbert was one of the biggest names on television. But behind those sweet braids and vintage bonnet, a different story was taking place.
Even though Gilbert and Michael Jr. first started off as just friends, during their teenage years their friendship kindled into a romance. Michael Jr. became one of the first people she had a crush on.
“He was adorable; he had blond, curly hair and a great sense of humor. I would lie in bed at night and his face would flash before my eyes as I tried to fall asleep. It was the first time I experienced butterflies in my stomach when I thought about a boy,” she recalled in her memoir Prairie Tale. While the crush eventually fizzled out, the two remained close friends. Underneath it all, Gilbert was trying her best to be a typical teenager.
Her character’s age on the show corresponded with her real age, and back in the day, she really was an innocent little girl, just like the Ingalls.
“By child-actor standards, mine was probably the best experience that you could have,” she told Today. “I had a fairly grounded home life. In fact, I was the opposite of what you would expect a child star to be: I was a total dork,” she continued.
Despite her positive experiences as a child actress back in the '70s, Gilbert had to grow up quickly. By the time she reached her late teens, Gilbert was already considered a household name and a veteran in the acting industry.
With her big break happening before she reached double figures, Gilbert’s life was never going to be ordinary. Spending so much of her childhood playing a sweet farmer’s daughter, it was only a matter of time before she shed her old persona.
As much as she tried to resist, her teenage life looked very different from other teens. For Gilbert, rebellion came in the form of drinking, drugs, and co-dependence on men, all while keeping her problems hidden from the public eye.
It was only after releasing her memoir decades later that she revealed her previous struggles. “I don’t know if I rebelled so much as tested the waters—swam against the waters. Drank the waters,” she explained to TODAY.
All eyes were on Melissa Gilbert and her tumultuous personal life as she was still playing sweet young Laura, but in real life, navigating dating through her late teenage years. Her first major public relationship came when she was 17, as she was romantically linked to heartthrob Tom Cruise.
The pair dated for a short time when they were both teens. “We went on a couple of dates and made out in my mom’s living room,” Gilbert wrote in her memoir Prairie Tale.
