How many times have you thought about an old series you loved watching and wondered what the actors are doing after all these years? I guess many of you who watched Little House on the Prairie and were excited about each new adventure of the family living on the Plum Creek farm near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, would love to know what the actors are doing today.
Fans who loved actress Melissa Sue Anderson, who played Mary Ingalls, were convinced that she would continue to be part of their lives through the screen, but she had other plans. Today, she speaks about her decision to leave Hollywood and move to Canada.
This actress began her career with guest roles and found her place in show business when she became one of the central characters in Little House on the Prairie. Her acting performance earned her several nominations for Best Actress in a Drama Series, and her fans knew she deserved it.
Regarding her experience filming the drama that made her famous, Anderson told Pop Entertainment in 2010:
“I’m lucky there was even a role to play because there wasn’t much of her in the book. Laura [Ingalls, author of the Little House novels on which the series was based and centered] was a much older woman when she wrote the books.
She remembered the best parts of her life. The characters of Ma and Mary weren’t very significant. There was a lot of Laura and Pa, Laura and Jack the dog, and Laura and Mr. Edwards, but not much of Mary. I’m lucky they discovered that I could act.”
After Little House on the Prairie, she tried a few other small roles but married television producer Michael Sloan in 1990 and moved to Montreal in 2002 with her husband and their two children, daughter Piper and son Griffin. In 2007, the family became Canadian citizens, and their new life brought new responsibilities. Anderson decided to leave show business because she wanted to spend more time with her children and didn’t want them to feel pressured into pursuing acting careers themselves.
In an interview with E-Talk, Anderson said: “I retired for a very long time. It was really for the kids, so they could develop their own sense of self instead of always being with me.
However, Anderson did not completely give up acting, but instead took on smaller roles in recent years. Her life experience while working on a series like Our Little Farm encouraged her to write a memoir titled The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House.
