How often do you find yourself reminiscing about an old TV show you loved and wondering what its actors are up to now? If you were a fan of "Little House on the Prairie," eagerly following the adventures of the family living on the farm in Plum Creek near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, you might be curious about the actors' lives today.
Fans of Melissa Sue Anderson, who played the beautiful Mary Ingalls, likely expected to see her continue gracing their screens, but she chose a different path.
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| Wikimedia Commons |
Melissa Sue Anderson decided to leave Hollywood behind and move to Canada, a choice she openly discusses today.
Anderson's acting career began with guest roles, but she truly made her mark as one of the central figures in "Little House on the Prairie." Her performance earned her several nominations for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series, much to the delight of her fans who believed she deserved the recognition.
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| Wikimedia Commons / NBC Television |
Reflecting on her time filming the show that catapulted her to fame, Anderson told Pop Entertainment in 2010, “I’m lucky that there even was a character to play, because in the book, there isn’t much of one. Laura [Ingalls, author of the Little House novels upon which the series was based] was quite an older woman when she wrote the books. She was remembering the best of her life. The characters of Ma and Mary didn’t factor in a lot. There was a lot of Laura and Pa and Laura and Jack the dog and Laura and Mr. Edwards, but there wasn’t a lot of Mary. I’m fortunate that they discovered that I could act.”
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After her iconic role as Mary Ingalls, Anderson explored other minor roles. In 1990, she married television producer Michael Sloan, and in 2002, they moved to Montreal with their two children, daughter Piper and son Griffin.
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| Melissa Anderson with her husband (Twitter) |
By 2007, the family had become Canadian citizens. Embracing their new life, Anderson decided to step away from showbiz to spend more time with her children and ensure they didn’t feel pressured to follow in her acting footsteps.
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| Melissa Anderson with her daughter Piper (Twitter) |
In an interview with E-Talk, Anderson explained, “I really stepped away for a long time. That was really for the kids so they would have their own sense of who they were as opposed to being with me.”
Although Anderson didn't entirely leave acting, taking on smaller roles in recent years, her transformative experience on "Little House on the Prairie" inspired her to write a memoir titled The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House.
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| Melissa Sue Anderson attends the closing ceremony during the 61st Monte Carlo TV Festival on June 21, 2022 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) |
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