How many times have you thought about an old show you loved watching and wondered what the cast is up to after all these years? I’m guessing that many of you who watched Our Little Farm and were excited about each new adventure of the family that lives on the Plum Creek farm near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, would like to know what the cast is up to today.
Fans who loved actress Melissa Sue Anderson, who played Mary Ingalls, were convinced that she would continue to be a part of their lives through the screen, but she had other plans. Today, she talks about her decision to leave Hollywood and move to Canada. This actress started her career with guest roles and found her niche in show business when she became one of the central characters on Little Farm. Her acting performance earned her several nominations for Best Actress in a Drama Series, and her fans knew she deserved it.
Of her experience filming the drama that made her famous, Anderson told Pop Entertainment in 2010: “I’m lucky that there was even a part to play because there’s not a lot 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 was remembering the best of her life. The characters of Mom and Mary didn’t matter much. There was a lot of Laura and Dad and Laura and Jack the dog and Laura and Mr. Edwards, but there wasn’t a lot of Mary. I’m lucky that they found out that I could play.” » After “Little House on the Prairie,” she tried 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 did not want them to feel pressured to pursue acting careers of their own.
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 themselves instead of always being with me.”
However, Anderson has not given up acting completely, but has instead taken on smaller roles in recent years. Her experience living on a show like Our Little Farm inspired her to write a memoir called The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House.
