Little House On The Prairie veteran Melissa Gilbert has talked about her six-year relationship with Rob Lowe, who was an ’80s icon thanks to his movies Class and St Elmo’s Fire.
The former child star said the relationship was ‘very tumultuous’.
The 61-year-old dated Rob, also 61, off and on from 1981 to 1987, and has now admitted his heartthrob status was difficult to deal with.
Speaking on the I Choose Me With Jennie Garth podcast, she said: ‘I guess looking back on those six years, I mean, I was such a baby when Rob and I were together.’
The TV star added: ‘I was 17 and we broke up for the last time when we were 23 and it was very tumultuous.
‘I felt like a bit of an old sage in the business at that point because I’d been doing it for so long. And I was still on Little House on the Prairie when we met, and it had already been years, and he was sort of starting out.
Little House On The Prairie vet Melissa Gilbert has talked about her six-year relationship with Rob Lowe who was an ’80s icon thanks to his movies Class and St Elmo’s Fire. The former child star said the relationship was ‘very tumultuous.’ Seen in the ’80s
The 61-year-old dated Rob, 61, off and on from 1981 to 1987, and has now admitted his heartthrob status was difficult to deal with. Speaking on the I Choose Me With Jennie Garth podcast , she said: ‘I guess looking back on those six years, I mean, I was such a baby when Rob and I were together.’ Seen in 1982
‘He’d done a little bit of television. And so I was able to sort of sit back and watch this meteoric rise happen.
‘I don’t think I was prepared for the stuff that came with it, necessarily. I was prepared for all of having to go to premieres and things and award shows and all of that, but I wasn’t prepared for the fandom and frankly, the girls.
‘I always thought that every girl and woman was my sister. We’re sisters, but it was not evident at all when Rob and I were a couple. I mean, it was like I didn’t exist. They just pushed right past me and stick phone numbers in his pockets and stuff.
‘To say it was disconcerting is doing it a big disservice. It was hard and horrible,’ she shared.
However, Melissa is now grateful for the romance as it helped her set boundaries in future relationships.
She said: ‘I think I learned a lot about what didn’t work for me, actually, and what I wouldn’t stand for later on.
‘They’re hard because they usually are born of heartbreak and angst, but those are really valuable and important lessons… We had some really, really, really fun times.
She had a rumored fling with Tom Cruise in the ’80s. They are pictured together in 1982
‘But in looking back, I look at the way my life is so easeful now and I look at it back then, and I feel like my shoulders were always up by my ears, always waiting for the next shoe to drop or something bad to happen or some, I don’t know, something untoward or gross.’
This comes after she said in 2022 that she ‘lost her mind, got Botox and bought a Mustang’ in the wake of her 2011 split from her second husband.
That was long before she ditched Hollywood for the simple life in the Catskills.
Gilbert — whose book Back to the Prairie detailed her life with current husband Timothy Busfield and moving to the Catskills — had told Fox News that she stop doing plastic surgery and turned her back on Hollywood expectations for the freedom of being in her own skin.
The actress says she ‘lost her mind’ after the 2011 divorce from her second husband Bruce Boxleitner, according to an interview with Page Six.
Gilbert (left, in green) played Laura Ingalls on the wildly famous Little House on the Prairie (pictured L-R: Gilbert, Michael Landon, Karen Grassle, Melissa Sue Anderson as Mary Ingalls Kendall (front), Sydney Greenbush)
Gilbert (pictured in 2014 and 2020) had her breast implants removed in 2015 and gave up Botox shortly thereafter. She also had three nose jobs by the age of 20, making her nose thinner after makeup artist continued to contour
She admitted that she got Botox and fillers, bought a Mustang and even got herself a younger French boyfriend, who wore a T-shirt that read ‘Snatch’ to a brunch at her mother’s house.
‘It was like, I lost my mind,’ she told Page Six.
‘One of my friends says, “You know, every once in a while we all have to go to the zoo. And you went and now you’re back.”‘
Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls in the classic TV series which aired between 1974 and 1982, revealed in her 2010 memoir how she struggled with drugs and alcoholism, underwent multiple plastic surgery procedures throughout her career and had a series of relationships with some of Hollywood’s leading men – including Tom Cruise.
