Little House on the Prairie’ superstar Michael Landon Felt Guilty Over His Troubled Daughter:‘If She Didn’t Exist, I Wouldn’t Feel All This Pain’
If you watched Little House on The Prairie, you would certainly remember Michael Landon.
Landon didn’t just find himself in Hollywood, he previously worked as a gas station attendant in Los Angeles where Bob Raisin a talent agent picked him and it didn’t take long before he found himself in the spotlight.
His breakthrough role came after he was cast on Bonanza as Little Jose Cartwright and spent 14 years on the show before it was finally cancelled.
It didn’t take long before he appeared on Little House of Prairie which won him awards.
Speaking about his private life, Landon has been married three times and has nine children from all his marriages.
Apart from having a successful career he tried to be a great father to his children but one of his children, Cheryl Landon was the most challenging amongst all his children.
Cheryl was nine years old when he got married to her mother actress Marjorie Lynn Noe.
In an interview with The Washington Post back in 1983, Michael talked openly about his step-daughter’s problems with Miltown, a drug similar to Valium.
“I suspected it during her last two years of high school,” he said. “Then she went to the University of Arizona. And I used all the excuses; no matter what she told me I would believe because I wanted to believe.”
At the age of 19, Cheryl almost died due to an overdose and Landon sent her to a rehab to overcome her addiction.
Landon told The Post: “You get very guilty about some of the feelings you have about your own child, one of which is,‘I wish she did not exist.’
“‘If she didn’t exist, I wouldn’t feel all this pain.’”
Cheryl at the age of 20 was involved in a car crash, and she was the only survivor.
”My father willed me back to life. He sat with me for a month. After the doctors had given up on me, I remember him saying to me, ”Fight, Baby!”, Cheryl told Chicago Tribune.
“Most people don’t really pray very hard until they really need it,” Landon said. “It’s the same as, a lot of people get very religious when they get very old.
Whether or not it’s a ‘just in case’ kind of thing, I don’t know. But I never have prayed so hard in my life as I did there. And she lived.”
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