Zoneboy
07-14-2010, 10:44 PM
Link (http://www.ontheredcarpet.com/2010/07/nagging-back-pain-turns-out-to-be-a-broken-back-for-actress-melissa-gilbert-.html)
Actress Melissa Gilbert received bad news following a visit to a Los Angeles doctor earlier this month. According to People magazine, her doctor told her,"Your back is broken, and it has been for months."
Gilbert, 46, has been playing the role of Caroline "Ma" Ingalls in the touring musical Little House on the Prairie, based on the show she starred in as a child and teenager, since it debuted in 2008 and continued to perform on stage despite recent back pain.
"I would balk and fight it and say, 'I've got to do the show," Gilbert said. "If it got really bad and I lost feeling in my legs or couldn't move, I'd go to the ER."
She is scheduled to undergo surgery on July 22. Doctors are scheduled to replace a disc as well as fuse a vertebra in her lower spine. This type of procedure has a recovery time of six months, although Gilbert plans to return to work sometime in fall. However, she will not be returning to the stage, opting for less strenuous film work instead.
"I thought doing a musical at 46 playing a woman in her late 20s, early 30s was amazing enough," she said. "But doing it with a broken back buys me a little more street cred."
On the television series, which ran between 1974 and 1983, Gilbert played Caroline Ingall's daughter "Laura 'half-pint' Ingalls", the author of the 1930s children's books that inspired the show. In addition to acting, Gilbert served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild from 2001 to 2005.
For now, the musical is on hiatus and the producers hope to make the leap to Broadway in the near future. It is not known whether or not Gilbert will resume her role.
She told the New York Times in 2008 that she feels "deeply protective" of the story and had told Karen Grassle, who played Caroline Ingalls on television, that hers were "big shoes to fill." She also said she would like to think Michael Landon, who played family patriarch Charles Ingalls and passed away in 1991 of pancreatic cancer at age 54, would have liked the musical.
Actress Melissa Gilbert received bad news following a visit to a Los Angeles doctor earlier this month. According to People magazine, her doctor told her,"Your back is broken, and it has been for months."
Gilbert, 46, has been playing the role of Caroline "Ma" Ingalls in the touring musical Little House on the Prairie, based on the show she starred in as a child and teenager, since it debuted in 2008 and continued to perform on stage despite recent back pain.
"I would balk and fight it and say, 'I've got to do the show," Gilbert said. "If it got really bad and I lost feeling in my legs or couldn't move, I'd go to the ER."
She is scheduled to undergo surgery on July 22. Doctors are scheduled to replace a disc as well as fuse a vertebra in her lower spine. This type of procedure has a recovery time of six months, although Gilbert plans to return to work sometime in fall. However, she will not be returning to the stage, opting for less strenuous film work instead.
"I thought doing a musical at 46 playing a woman in her late 20s, early 30s was amazing enough," she said. "But doing it with a broken back buys me a little more street cred."
On the television series, which ran between 1974 and 1983, Gilbert played Caroline Ingall's daughter "Laura 'half-pint' Ingalls", the author of the 1930s children's books that inspired the show. In addition to acting, Gilbert served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild from 2001 to 2005.
For now, the musical is on hiatus and the producers hope to make the leap to Broadway in the near future. It is not known whether or not Gilbert will resume her role.
She told the New York Times in 2008 that she feels "deeply protective" of the story and had told Karen Grassle, who played Caroline Ingalls on television, that hers were "big shoes to fill." She also said she would like to think Michael Landon, who played family patriarch Charles Ingalls and passed away in 1991 of pancreatic cancer at age 54, would have liked the musical.