‘70s TV Star Melissa Gilbert Reveals Surprising Way She Found Out She Landed Role on Beloved Show
Melissa Gilbert learned that she landed a starring role on Little House on the Prairie in an unexpected way. In a new interview with People magazine, the actress revealed she found out that she landed the starring role as Laura “Half Pint” Ingalls "unconventionally," from director and star Michael Landon's daughter, Leslie.
The actress explained that she was sure she didn’t get the role after dozens of girls auditioned for the coveted part, but a run-in with Landon’s daughter gave her an early alert.
"I was at school one day and I was in the lunch area, and this girl in an upper grade walked over to me and she said, 'Are you Melissa?' And I said, 'Yeah, I am.' And she said, 'I'm Leslie Landon. And my dad says you're gonna be Half Pint,’” Gilbert, 61, recalled in the June 2025 interview.
Leslie Landon told Gilbert that her father spilled the news that he’d found his ‘Half Pint” at their family's dinner table the night before. "My agents didn't know yet. My mom didn't know yet,” Gilbert added. “Leslie got in so much trouble. We've been really close friends ever since that day.”
Gilbert portrayed Laura Ingalls on the hit NBC western series from 1974 to 1983, alongside Landon, who played patriarch Charles Ingalls. The child actress was just nine years old when she auditioned for the part of Laura.
Gilbert's audition scene with Landon has been posted online, and it’s a tearjerker. In the scene, Laura is upset by her father’s reaction to the drowning death of their dog, Jack.
Gilbert opened up about the screen test in an interview for Emmy TV Legends. While she hadn’t been totally sure she landed the Little House role, Landon knew right away that she was the one.
“I remember, clear as anything, the two of us doing the scene and him looking at me with tears in his eyes,” Gilbert recalled of her audition. “There was some sort of symbiotic connection there. I found out later, many, many years later, that when it came time to take the screen test to the network, he only took mine. Because he knew. He didn't give them any other choices. He just said, ‘That's Laura. That's Half Pint.'”
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