Melissa Gilbert joins Anna Paquin in calling for better protection for child actors in Hollywood following Hayden Panettiere’s death |
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 for child actors
According to PEOPLE magazine, the Little House on the Prairie actress, 62, shared her thoughts in an essay published Saturday, calling for changes in the way young actors are treated as they grow up in the entertainment industry.Gilbert said he did not know Panettiere personally and had only worked briefly with Chase and Trachtenberg. However, she said their deaths seemed personal to her because she, too, had grown up as a child artist. “I didn’t know Hayden personally and only worked briefly with Mishy and Daveigh. It feels personal because I was them,” Gilbert wrote.
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 the women who began their careers as child artists share a strong connection.“We are all members of the same tribe: former child artists, and when one of us dies, it runs through us all like an electric current,” Gilbert wrote. “When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong.”
Melissa Gilbert says the ‘pressure of fame’ is getting worse
Gilbert said he feels the entertainment industry’s habit of putting children to work and then letting them deal with the pressures of fame as adults is getting worse.He also spoke about what he called “Doctor Show Syndrome”, saying that 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 terribly ill, injured or worse. My father died when I was only eleven and I returned to work on Little House within months. And not a single adult on that set talked to me about it or offered condolences,” she recalled.Gilbert said she later learned that people were worried she would get too angry to work. She believes the experience taught her to continue working even when she was unwell.
Melissa Gilbert on shooting despite undergoing appendectomy
She recalled undergoing an emergency appendectomy while filming a movie in Oregon and returning to work just three days later because she felt guilty for affecting the filming schedule.“A few days later I fell ill with a horrible fever. I continued filming for a few more days until I finished my work, flew home and was immediately hospitalized, hallucinating from the fever.
“I was on the verge of sepsis,” Gilbert shared.He said young actors shouldn’t feel like they have to overcome physical or emotional pain simply to avoid being seen as difficult.“These young professionals are children and we must ensure that they are allowed to be children,” Gilbert wrote. “They should be allowed to say ‘no’. Not overcome physical or emotional pain. It will not be done to keep their families whole.
And they certainly should not be followed wherever they go by cameras, phones and prying, exploitative eyes.”
Defends child stars
Anna Paquin also joined in and called on Hollywood to protect child actors following the deaths of Hayden Panettiere, Michelle Trachtenberg and Daveigh Chase.“It’s no coincidence that so many former child ‘stars,’ specifically pre-sexualized women, have deeply sad lives and premature endings. We weren’t as protected by the ‘systems’ that look great on paper, as we’re supposed to be,” Paquin wrote on Instagram on Friday.
She rose to fame at age 11 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 supporting no matter how our industry makes us feel.” She went on to write in the comments: “I’m talking very specifically about the experience of a child on set who finds himself prematurely a ‘sex object.’ I’m not implying that harm isn’t done outside of the context of entertainment. But that’s a longer post for a different time. I also used the women’s initials because I ran out of space.
Nothing to read. “Just logistics.”
