’70s TV star Melissa Gilbert recalls treatment as a child actor following Hayden Panettiere’s death

Former child stars are speaking out following the death of Hayden Panettiere, opening up about their own tough times growing up working in Hollywood.

Nearly a week after Panettiere’s death, Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert, 62, published an essay about her own experiences, including how she kept working after her father died when she was just 11.

Gilbert reflected on the recent deaths of three stars from the same generation: Panettiere, Michelle Trachtenberg and Daveigh Chase.

“I did not know Hayden personally and only worked briefly with Mishy and Daveigh. It feels personal because I was them,” Gilbert wrote, listing off other former female child actors including Drew Barrymore, Jodie Foster and Dakota and Elle Fanning.

“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 pointed to something she called “Doctor Show Syndrome”, which encourages children to work “when we are sick both physically and emotionally”.

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“I can’t tell you how many times I worked while horribly sick, injured or worse. My father died when I was just 11 years old and I was back working on Little House within months,” she said.

“And not one single adult on that set discussed it with me or offered condolences. I later found out that the fear was I would become too upset to work. I was 11, my Daddy had just died, and I was shattered. Thank God my character cried in every single episode. That, as twisted as it sounds, was my therapy. My release.”

She said that experience had set her up for a pattern of working “no matter what”, including three days after an emergency appendectomy.

“These young professionals are children, and we should make sure they are allowed to be children,” Gilbert wrote.

“They should be allowed to say ‘no’. Not push through physical or emotional pain. Not be made to support their entire families. And most certainly not to be followed everywhere they go by cameras, phones and prying, exploitative eyes.”

Gilbert said she thought of Kaya, Panettiere’s 11-year-old daughter who has now also lost a parent.

“I have this image in my mind of Hayden’s little girl who will now grow up without her Mama. She is eleven years old. That’s the same age I was when my father died,” she wrote.

“And now I am weeping as I type this and I just want to scream from the rooftops, ‘ENOUGH!’”

In her essay, Gilbert noted that Anna Paquin, who won an Oscar at 11, had also posted about the need for change.

“It’s not a coincidence that so many former, specifically pre-sexualised female, child ‘stars’ have profoundly sad lives and untimely ends,” Paquin wrote on Instagram.

“We are not as protected by the ‘systems’ that look great on paper as we are supposed to be.”

She called on other members of the “strange, small club” of child actors to message her for support.

“You aren’t alone. Let’s have each other’s backs,” she said.

Paquin’s post resonated, with Evan Rachel Wood, Mighty Ducks star Marguerite Moreau and The Testaments′ Rowan Blanchard among those reacting with heart emojis.