Melisa Sue Anderson, who played Mary Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie,” wanted a big family and a nice, loving husband when she was a teenager. Even though she didn’t have as many kids, she did very bad things to make sure they had her full attention.
Melissa Sue Anderson, a former child star, once said, “I’d like to have four to six kids—I like big families.”
When asked what she was looking for in a guy, she kept it general while listing some traits she might look for.
This picture shows Melissa Sue Anderson, a former child star, on the NBC News “Today Show.”
| Source: Getty Images
“What do I want in a man?” “I guess that’s what everyone else wants—someone nice and loveable,” the Canadian-American actor said.
Here’s more about Anderson’s husband and the kids she didn’t want to raise, just like Michael Landon did with his kids.
THE WAY MELISSA MARRIED HER OLD LOVE
She was dating Frank Sinatra Jr. before she met Michael Sloan, who is now her husband. They met on “The Love Boat” in 1979, when he was 37 and she was 17. The person from California talked about their relationship:
“It was fun. It was never really wild, though. “That’s not me at all.”
She was chosen in ‘umpteen Movies of the Week’ after her time on ‘Little House’. These included TV shows like ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ (1987), where she met Sloan, the man she would later marry.
During that time, he was the show’s chief producer. Three years later, they got married. After that, Anderson stopped taking parts.
Sloan married Anderson on March 17, 1990. They have been married for over 30 years. Sloan was born in New York City in October 1946.
Besides “Hitchock,” he created and wrote “The Equaliser” (2014) and “The Equaliser 2” (2018), as well as “Quincy M.E.” (1976).
He also created the TV show “The Equaliser,” which starred Edward Woodward and had Anderson play Woodward’s daughter.
On April 24, 1980, in California, Melissa Sue Anderson went to the Variety International Humanitarian Awards at Century City. Picture from Getty Images
Later, she talked about her co-star and said that he was a good friend. She also said that after her wedding to Sloan the next Saturday, they had a blessing in England and Edward walked her down the aisle.
Anderson quit show business when she was 35 years old and was happily married. She lived in Southern California’s Topanga Canyon with her 51-year-old husband and their family.
Gryphon and Piper were their two children born during their marriage. Their first child, a 32-year-old daughter named Piper, was born in February 1991. Their second child, a boy named Gryphon, was born in June 1996.
Anderson talked about her retirement at the time and said she liked living a normal life away from the prying eyes of Hollywood. She also said it felt good to get to know herself without acting in her life:
“It’s nice to be a normal person.” You can get a better sense of who I am without having to act.
Anderson, 60, came back to Hollywood after a twelve-year break and said that she knew deep down, even before she had kids, that she would not be able to balance her work with raising her kids:
“I didn’t want my kids to grow up with a parent who is always being stopped and asked to take pictures.” They’ve grown up to be the centre of attention in the family.
One time, the mom of two talked about Landon as an example of how his kids lived in the centre and how he paid more attention to other people than they did:
“I remember Michael Landon when I was a kid playing with his kids.” Getting stopped all the time at his daughter’s birthday party to sign autographs, among other things.
He said, “I think that takes so much attention away from the child that should be on them and puts it on the parent, which is so wrong.” “You know the kids should be the centre of attention in their lives.”
“So, I think I made the right choice.” In fact, she said, “I feel like they’ve grown up to be their own people and are so sure of themselves that even they’d like to see me work a little.”
Anderson went back to acting after being a stay-at-home mum and staying out of the spotlight while her kids grew up and moved out on their own.
The actress from “Bless All the Dear Children” said that neither of her children wanted to be actors like her and turned them down by going into other fields.
Piper is her oldest child. She works as a Training and Evaluation Programmes Specialist at the American Society of Haematology and knows English, French, Italian, and Spanish.
He or she is 32 years old and has an M.A. in International Communication from American University. Piper used to be a Senior Manager at the Lymphoma Research Foundation.
Gryphon, her younger brother, works as a law clerk at Haworth Barber & Gerstman, LLC. As a legal intern at Charles M. Mirotznik, Esq., he has worked elsewhere before.
He then worked as a Staff Editor for the Cardozo Moot Court Honour Society and then as a Legal Intern at the Nilson Law Group, PLLC. He is now 26 years old.
Gryphon went to College International Marie de France and got a Bachelor of Arts in French in Economics and Social Science. He also went to school at New York University and got a BA in sociology. And finally, he has a Doctor of Law (J.D.) from Cardozo School of Law.
Besides English, he also knows French and Italian, just like his sister. Griff won the David Berg Public Interest Fellow award in August 2018. He also came in second place for Best Oralist at the Monrad G. Paulson Moot Court Competition.
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When the kids were fifteen and nine years old, they made their mum go back to acting. Anderson, who co-starred in NBC’s May disaster movie drama “10.5: Apocalypse,” said, “It’s funny how it has turned around on me like that.”
“You spend all your time raising your kids, and then they tell you, ‘Oh, mum, you should spend more time acting again,’ and they push you to do it.”
Melissa Sue Anderson played the babysitter Toby King on the October 25, 1983, episode of “First Affair.” Picture from Getty Images
She was living with her family in Montreal at the time and was 43 years old. She played the President’s wife on “10.5,” which got her out of the house.
She wasn’t too far from her family, though, since the show was shot in Montreal. This was one of her most well-known roles after taking a break from acting. She played the First Lady in 2006.
After a few years, she got bigger parts and was in “Marker 18,” “The Con is On,” and “Veronica Mars.” During that time, she and her husband raised their children. From what I can tell from her Twitter, Anderson loves and supports her kids.
In 2002, the family moved to Canada. In 2007, she and Sloan became citizens of Canada. The former star of “The Brady Bunch” had another job going on at the same time she was working and taking care of her family.
She wrote an autobiography called “The Way I See It: A Look Back At My Life on Little House,” which came out in 2012. In 2014, she joined the cast of “Little House” for a return on the “Today Show.”
