How many times have you thought about an old show you used to enjoy watching and wondered what the actors were doing after all these years? I’m sure many of you who watched “Little House on the Prairie” and were excited to witness each new adventure of the family living on the farm in Plum Creek near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, would like to know what the performers are up to now.
Fans of the actress who played Mary Ingalls, Melissa Sue Anderson, were confident she would continue to be a part of their lives on television, but she had other intentions.
Today, she discusses her decision to leave Hollywood and move to Canada.
This actress began her acting career in guest appearances before breaking into the spotlight as one of the main characters on “Little House on the Prairie.” Her acting earned her multiple nominations for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series, and her admirers felt she deserved them.
After Mary Ingalls, she tried her hand at several lesser roles before marrying television producer Michael Sloan in 1990. She moved to Montreal with her husband and their two children, Piper and Griffin, in 2002.
In 2007, the family became Canadian citizens, and with that came new responsibilities, so Anderson chose to leave show business to spend more time with her children and not put them under pressure to pursue performing professions themselves.
In an interview with E-Talk, Anderson said, “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.”
Anderson did not, however, abandon acting entirely, instead taking on minor jobs in recent years. Her life-changing experience as a character in shows like “Little House on the Prairie” inspired her to write a memoir called The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House.
