Photo: Bob Bekian from Thousand Oaks Ca., USA / CC BY-SA 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Melissa Gilbert earned my respect by doing the hardest thing a child star can do: outliving the role without disowning it. Nine seasons as Laura Ingalls could have been a cage; instead she treated it as a foundation, moving on to stage work, a Theatre World Award, and eventually autobiography, where she reclaimed her own narrative in her own voice. There is something poetic about a Los Angeles kid, raised inside the entertainment machine, becoming television's emblem of frontier simplicity. I find her later candor about the industry, aging, and identity more compelling than the nostalgia. She turned a childhood spent on camera into an adulthood worth reading about.
Overview
Melissa Ellen Gilbert (born May 8, 1964) is an American actress. Gilbert began her career as a child actress in the late 1960s, appearing in numerous commercials and guest-starring roles on television. From 1974 to 1983, she starred as Laura Ingalls Wilder, the second-oldest daughter of Charles Ingalls (played by Michael Landon) on the NBC series Little House on the Prairie.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Melissa Gilbert
- Name (Japanese)
- メリッサ・ギルバート
- Reading
- めりっさ・ぎるばーと
- Born
- May 8, 1964 (age 62)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Taurus / Dragon
- Origin
- Los Angeles, California, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- actor / autobiographer / television actor / stage actor / film actor
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Private
Awards & achievements
- 1988 Theatre World Award
- star on Hollywood Walk of Fame
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Actor — see all → · Autobiographer — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-11
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.