See the Twins Who Played Carrie on "Little House on the Prairie" Now at 52
Former child stars Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush left the spotlight not long after the show ended.
Viewers of the iconic 1970s TV series Little House on the Prairie, based on the novels by Laura Ingalls Wilder, watched the youngest Ingalls daughter Carrie grow up onscreen. But due to a quirk of the title cards in the series' opening credits, which listed the "actor" playing Carrie as "Lindsay Sidney Greenbush," many fans never knew that the child was actually played by two different people: twin sisters Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush, who shared the role across eight seasons of Little House.
The children of actor Billy Green Bush, Lindsay and Sidney seemed to have acting in their blood, but both soon left the industry shortly after their time on the show came to a close in 1982. Keep reading to see where their lives have taken them since, and to see them today, at age 52.
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They never again shared a role.
Prior to and throughout their time on Little House, Lindsay (who also goes by her full name, Rachel Lindsay) and Sidney, like other acting twins, always jointly performed the same role. But after leaving the show, each sister logged a few more acting roles, but they never again shared the same part.
In 1983, Sidney appeared in a small role in the film Hambone and Hillie, starring silent film legend Lillian Gish, Oscar nominee Candy Clark, Timothy Bottoms, and O.J. Simpson. That same year, Lindsay appeared in an episode of the ABC crime drama Matt Houston. The two also appeared together in commercials before retiring from acting to focus on finishing high school.
Lindsay hasn't completely retired from acting.
Though their actor father appeared in films well into the '90s, Lindsay and Sidney largely pulled back from the spotlight.
After graduating from high school in Santa Monica, Lindsay briefly attended college before moving to Taos, New Mexico in 1993. She later returned to California, obtained an accounting degree, according to her bio on IMDB; she has also worked as a horse trainer, having grown up riding and competing in show jumping competitions. According to a 2018 interview with the Little House fan podcast, Walnut GroveCast, she now even owns a horse once ridden by her sister Sidney in professional rodeo competitions. She also hasn't completely left performing behind, having appeared in a star-packed 2018 production of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues alongside her former Little House castmate Alison Arngrim (Nellie Oleson). Lindsay expressed an interest in continuing to work in the theater during that same podcast.
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Lindsay met her future husband on the set of Little House.
Lindsay has been married twice, though not to the father of her daughter Katlynn Danae, who was born in 1995. She wed her first husband, Frank Dornan, in 2001, but the relationship ended in divorce a few years later.
She later remarried, and that relationship has its roots in a friendship that began back in her days on the Little House set. According to an interview with Hallmark Channel's Home & Family, her future husband Danny Sanchez, who was 14 at the time, wasn't an actor but liked to hang out on the set of the series on the Big Sky Movie Ranch in Simi Valley, California, near his home. The two met while Lindsay was sitting under an oak tree during a break from filming the Season 5 episode "The Wolves."
What would have probably amounted to nothing more than a forgotten childhood encounter gained new resonance when the two happened to meet again in 2012 and began dating. In 2014, they married—under the same oak tree where they'd first met. The former actor shared photos of the event, with the familiar tree front and center, on Twitter in 2015.
Sidney leads a more private life.
Sidney doesn't share as much about her life publicly—she isn't even on social media—but we know she has also maintained her childhood love of horses. She attended Pierce College in Los Angeles, pursuing a degree in animal science, and according to her sister's interview with Walnut GroveCast, went on to become a rodeo performer and competitive barrel jumper. According to a 2015 interview with The Malibu Times, Sidney has also worked in the residential construction industry as an administrator and gotten involved in amateur boxing. Per a 2011 Little House reunion segment that appeared on Today, she worked with the Kid Gloves Boxing Foundation, teaching boxing to high-risk kids in order to keep them off the streets.
Sidney was married to veterinarian and horse breeder William "Rocky" Foster from 2000 to 2009. He died the same year, and it doesn't appear that she ever remarried.
They recently reunited with the Little House cast.
Both sisters seem happy to look back on their time on Little House on the Prairie and have participated in fan events and reunions with other surviving cast members. Most recently, they appeared together in a 2021 episode of Stars in the House, a pandemic-era live-streamed reunion show that brought the casts of classic TV shows, movies, and theatrical productions back together in order to raise money for The Actors Fund.
