Cheryl Ladd asked parents for 'luggage' after high school graduation so she could...

[TMC]

...leave their 'tiny town in South Dakota'

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebri...943e9e6b&ei=13

Actress and singer Cheryl Ladd is best known for her role as Kris Munroe on the hit TV series Charlie's Angels, which helped turn her into a household name in the late 1970s.

But long before the fame, Ladd was a creative teenager growing up in a small town in South Dakota, dreaming of something bigger. In a recent interview with Woman's World, she reflected on how her parents always supported her ambitions — even when they led her far from home.

“I need to give my parents credit, because the only thing they asked of us was that we behave ourselves and don’t get in trouble, take our school work seriously and just be ourselves. ‘Just be who you are,’” the 74-year-old told the outlet. “They never told me what I could or could not be. To get that advice from your parents was a wonderful gift.”

That encouragement showed up in different ways for each of the siblings. Ladd recalled that when her older sister graduated from high school, their mother asked what she wanted to mark the milestone.

“When my sister, who’s a couple of years older than I am, graduated high school, our mother asked what she wanted and she said a hope chest. She was going to marry her high school sweetheart and they’re still married. That’s who she was,” Ladd recalled. “She wanted a hope chest and said, ‘I’m going to have a family and I want to have a beautiful home and nice things,’ and my mother said, ‘Great.’ ”

When it was Ladd’s turn, however, her plans looked very different. “For me, I was a really creative person in a tiny town in South Dakota. I was going to have very limited opportunities there…” she explained.

“When I was graduating from high school and my mother asked me what I wanted for graduation, I said, ‘Luggage. I’m leaving. I can’t be me here. There’s no work for me here in South Dakota,’” she remembered saying to her parents. “I had to go either to New York or California, and I was singing with a band, so we ended up in California and the rest is history.”

That leap eventually led to Ladd replacing Farrah Fawcett during the second season of Charlie’s Angels — a role she has often described as a major launching point for her career. Even so, Ladd says the work she’s doing now continues to push her creatively.

“I must say that I’ve grown and have learned my craft over the course of these many years. And I’m enjoying my work even more, because the depth of the characters is challenging,” she told Woman’s World. “I’ve been given the challenge to do more and am doing so much more… I guess asking my parents for that luggage worked out pretty well. Love that luggage.”

Read the original article on People