If you grew up in the 1970s, there's a good chance you remember watching the TV show Land of the Lost. The children's science fiction series has a pretty wacky premise: two children and their father are transported to a world where dinosaurs exist, as well as human-like creatures called Sleestak and Pakuni. One of the stars of the Land of the Lost was Kathy Coleman, who played Holly, the young girl who finds herself on a mysterious adventure with her dad (Spencer Milligan) and brother (Wesley Eure).
Land of the Lost aired for three seasons from 1974 to 1976. And following her time on the show, Coleman stopped acting, so it's no surprise if you haven't heard about her in years. Now, the former child star isn't so active in the entertainment business, but is still very much involved with Land of the Lost's legacy. Read on to learn more about Coleman's life now.
RELATED: See Little Ricky, the Last Living Cast Member of I Love Lucy, All Grown Up.
She's still close with her castmates.
CBS Television DistributionLand of the Lost may have gone off the air 45 years ago, but Coleman, now 59, remains close with her fellow cast members. During a 2019 interview with Fox News, Coleman was asked about her relationship with the other actors on set. "It was amazing," she responded. "And even today, we’re as close as we can be. It’s like having a second family. When you’re doing a show, you don’t always expect to get along with everybody. But we got along famously. We’ve been getting together to do Comic-Con and travel the country for the last eight years to meet with fans."
She was particularly close with Phillip Paley, who played Cha-Ka. "Phillip and I were best friends and enjoyed our childhood playground together," Coleman told Billboard in 2012. "As far as show-biz kids go, we had an action-packed job."
She attends a lot of fan conventions.
Albert L. Ortega/Getty ImagesAs Coleman mentioned in the Fox News interview, she travels around to various conventions where she meets fans of the show. "When our show aired, there were basically only three networks," she told Fox News. "The kids were limited to what they could watch … so we have a humongous fan base because of that … We basically raised a generation. So these people come up to our tables when we do these shows and tell us all the different ways that the show affected them."
Coleman said that, in particular, people who were raised by single parents or divorced parents have told her they found comfort in seeing the single-parent family of Land of the Lost on TV.
For more celebrity news delivered right to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter.
She stopped acting after Land of the Lost.
Gabe Ginsberg/Getty ImagesOther than Land of the Lost, Coleman only appeared on one other TV series as a child actor, in an episode of Adam-12. That said, she did appear in a number of commercials. When Land of the Lost ended, Coleman stopped for the most part. "I still went on interviews until I drifted out of it," she told Fox News. "At age 18, I wound up doing a string of Burger King commercials … but that was pretty much my last gig."
In 2020, Coleman started acting again and appeared in a couple of projects. One was the comedy webseries TV Therapy, in which stars from classic TV shows play their former character as if they are talking through their issues with a therapist.
She's written two memoirs.
Bobby Bank/Getty ImagesColeman has written two books about her life. In 2015, Lost Girl: The Truth and Nothing But the Truth, So Help Me Kathleen was published, and Run Holly Run followed in 2017. In addition to talking about her time as a child actor, the books delve into her personal life, including her marriages. Coleman said in her Fox News interview that she went through a "really rough divorce." She also spoke about losing her mother when she was 24 years old. "There were lessons to be learned and some were incredibly difficult. But eventually, l learned them. I came out OK," she said.
She also shared that she was happily married. "It’s certainly nice to come home to loving yourself," she told Fox News of her outlook at the time of the interview. "It’s much better today than it’s ever been. I have an incredible husband who just adores me. It’s just wonderful, really."
RELATED: See Nellie From Little House on the Prairie Now at 59.
