Melissa Gilbert, the actress best known for playing Laura Ingalls Wilder on Little House on the Prairie, has called on Hollywood to better protect child stars, days after the death of actress Hayden Panettiere at age 36.
Gilbert, 62, made the appeal in a Substack essay titled "Enough Is Enough," published on Saturday. In it, she said child actors are being "exploited" and that "something has got to be done."
Panettiere was found unresponsive at an apartment in South Carolina on Sunday, August 16, and was later declared dead following a suspected overdose.
Gilbert opened the essay by noting the deaths of Panettiere, Michelle Trachtenberg and Daveigh Chase within the span of a year. "Three former female child actors of the same generation are gone. Tragically, heartbreakingly, agonizingly too soon," she wrote.
Gilbert's essay names three lost child stars
"They are gone and the question I have been turning over and over in my head is, 'WHY?'" she continued. "Why are these three sweet, wildly talented, vibrant, vital young women gone?"
Chase, known for playing Samara in The Ring, died aged 35 on June 16 from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, the most advanced stage of HIV infection, according to the LA County Medical Examiner.
Gilbert described former child performers as "all members of the same tribe" and said that "when one of us dies, it runs through all of us like an electrical current." She added, "When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong."
She reflected on growing up as a child on screen, naming other stars including Britney Spears, sisters Dakota and Elle Fanning, Drew Barrymore and Jodie Foster, and suggested the "invention of the mobile phone" may have made young stars far more exploited over the years.
"The real question haunting me is 'How do we fix or end this before someone else dies?'" she wrote, adding that it is "likely a combination of many factors, but it is incumbent on those of us who came before to support those experiencing it now."
Gilbert describes working through illness as a child
Gilbert also referenced what she called "Doctor Show Syndrome," which she said "kicks in and enables us to perform when we are sick both physically and emotionally." She claimed she worked while "horribly sick, injured or worse."
Just months after her father died when she was 11, Gilbert said she "was back working" on Little House on the Prairie. "And not one single adult on that set discussed it with me or offered condolences," she wrote. "I later found out that the fear was I would become too upset to work. I was eleven, my Daddy had just died and I was shattered."
"Thank God my character cried in every single episode," she added. "That, as twisted as it sounds, was my therapy. My release."
Gilbert also said she "nearly worked to death a few times," recalling one occasion when she had an emergency appendectomy while filming a movie in Oregon. She returned to work three days later to finish shooting and, by the time she got home, said she had been "on the verge of sepsis."
"That is what we are taught as young actors," she wrote. "These young professionals are children, and we should make sure they are allowed to be children."
Call for industry-wide mental health support
Gilbert called on "studios and networks to establish accessible free mental health support for all child actors as they transition into young adulthood," saying it "can only be accomplished with industry-wide cooperation."
She wrote that she pictured Panettiere's daughter, who is 11, who will now grow up without her mother, the same age Gilbert was when her own father died. "And now I am weeping as I type this and I just want to scream from the rooftops, 'ENOUGH!'" she wrote.
The Daily Mail has contacted a representative for Gilbert for comment.
Anna Paquin, who won an Oscar at age 11 for her role in The Piano, also criticized Hollywood's treatment of "presexualized" underage actresses on Friday, in an Instagram post shared on what would have been Panettiere's 37th birthday.
"It's not a coincidence that so many former, specifically presexualized female, child 'stars' have profoundly sad lives and untimely ends," Paquin wrote. "We were not as protected by the 'systems' that look great on paper, as we are supposed to be said. RIP HP, MT, DC, and too many others."
In June, Gilbert had also posted at length on Instagram addressing child star parents following Chase's death.
Gilbert's husband faces child sex abuse charges
Gilbert's Instagram post drew criticism on social media, as her husband, actor and director Timothy Busfield, fights child sex abuse allegations in court, though others voiced support for her message.
Busfield is charged with four counts of criminal sexual contact with a child under 13. He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors in New Mexico announced on February 6 that Busfield had been indicted on the charges.
The allegations involve two child actors who worked with Busfield on the television series The Cleaning Lady, which he produced and directed episodes of between 2022 and 2025. His trial is currently scheduled to begin in May 2027.
Busfield has said his career is over as a result of the allegations. In testimony to a grand jury in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in February, obtained by USA Today, he said, "I'm canceled. I'll never, I don't, I'll never work again just based on people's fear that I would do this again and, and even if it wasn't true, I'm done."
"I've lost TV shows, a movie they've digitally replaced me from. My agency fired me. I'm done. This is not about me or a pity thing," he continued. Busfield told the grand jury during two hours of testimony that his last hope was that his wife's career would not be sunk by his legal troubles.
