'Little House on the Prairie' star Melissa Gilbert shares why she ditched Hollywood: 'Had to get out of there'

Melissa Gilbert said she "had to get out" of Hollywood so she could "age comfortably" after landing a role on "Little House on the Prairie" at the age of 9.

"All of the pressures, I faced all of them," Gilbert explained to People magazine. "When you live in Los Angeles, it’s like living at the mall when you work at the mall. Literally, everyone is in the business. When you walk into a restaurant, every head turns to see who walked in. Everybody's always looking, curious, competing and that's a really difficult thing, especially for a female actor. It puts a lot of pressure on staying thin and staying young, and really it makes it hard to feel comfortable in one's own skin, because [of] the aging process."

"No matter how much we push it downstream, it's inevitable," she continued. "So are you going to age comfortably and happily? Are you going to fight it, be unhealthy and feel like there's something wrong with you for aging and that you're defective because you've gotten older?"