Melissa Gilbert is speaking out following the death of Daveigh Chase, another former child star. And the Little House on the Prairie alum has strong words for the parents of young Hollywood stars.
On Instagram, Gilbert posted a photo of Chase as a child, around the age she was when she and Gilbert filmed a TV series pilot with Jack Coleman and Kevin Zegers.
“I only worked with Daveigh a couple of days, but I could see she was bright both in countenance and in mind,” Gilbert wrote in the caption. “She was bubbly, sweet, and professional. But there was something else there, a push or need to perform… for her parents.”
Gilbert said she has crossed paths with many child actors and many stage parents. “Many child actors grow up just fine, whether they stay in ‘the business’ or not. That is 100 percent due to really solid, wise parenting,” she observed. “Child stardom, in itself, is not a guarantee of dysfunction. However, when a parent or parents lose sight of who they are, of what their true responsibility is, and their lives revolve solely around their little star child, well, that’s where the trouble begins.”
For cases in which child stardom doesn’t translate into adult stardom, the child can be devastated and families can be turned upside down, Gilbert wrote. “Today, reading the circumstances of Daveigh’s death, I’m truly heartbroken. I certainly understand substance addiction disorder, but this sweet girl’s death is so much more.”
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And Gilbert, who’s supporting husband Timothy Busfield amid the criminal allegations against him, shared imperatives for stage parents: “If I had the chance to speak to any parents who were thinking about getting their children in the industry, I would tell them to please, please make sure that they are doing it for the right reasons. That they will take the child to an accountant regularly so that he or she knows exactly what he or she is making, and where it is going. To be sure it’s something the child really wants. To be sure that that child has a life outside of the industry that is thriving and full of friends and responsibilities and ‘normal’ things. I would also ask that these parents memorize this sweet girl’s face and her story so that it never happens again.”
Chase starred in the horror film The Ring and the TV drama Big Love and voiced Lilo in the Disney film Lilo & Stitch. She died on June 16 at age 35, with a medical examiner’s report listing her cause of death as AIDS with other significant conditions including chronic polysubstance use, according to People.
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