‘Little House on the Prairie’ Star Advocates for Better Protection of Child Actors Following Hayden Panettiere’s Death

Actress and former child star Melissa Gilbert is speaking out after the death of fellow child star Hayden Panettiere.

In a post on her Substack, Gilbert lays it all out about her obligation to younger generations of female actors. In addition to Panettiere, she also mentions Michelle Trachtenberg, who died in 2025, and Daveigh Chase, who died earlier this year.

“They are gone and the question I have been turning over and over in my head is, ‘WHY?”. Why are these three sweet, wildly talented, vibrant, vital young women gone?” Gilbert asks.

While she claims she didn’t know Panettiere, she had worked with both Trachtenberg and Chase before their deaths.

“We are all members of the same tribe; Female Former Child Performers, and when one of us dies, it runs through all of us like an electrical current. When three of us die so close together, something is very, very wrong.”

Gilbert, child star of the original Little House on the Prairie, acknowledges the lack of privacy celebrities have.

She also calls out the tabloid media for profiting off the stories of celebrities in crisis.

“The voracious, tabloid-happy public eats it up with a spoon so they can feel better about their own lives. They can point to and judge these articles about addiction, dysfunction and misery,” she says.

“The real question haunting me is ‘How do we fix or end this before someone else dies?’” she asks.

Regardless of the specific reasons for these deaths, she knows something must be done. “It is incumbent on those of us who came before to support those experiencing it now,” she says.

The actress detailed that she worked through the death of her father at age 11. She also worked through a series of illnesses, injuries, and other personal strife throughout her nearly six decade-long career.

Claiming that the actors’ union’s young performers committee is “essentially toothless,” she’s calling on other female actresses like Drew Barrymore, Jodie Foster, Brooke Shields and the Fanning sisters “to take this into our own hands.”

“Maybe we start a group of our own to meet and share ideas and ways we might be able to lobby to support these young women,” she suggests. “Maybe we sit down with the heads of the studios and networks and have real conversations about mitigating exploitation. I think if we collectively had the opportunity to sit down with these ‘bosses’ we might be able to work with them to lobby for and enact real, substantive change.”