The Christian actress says God was "kind of a parent" to her when she began her career at the tender age of 12.
Now a 58-year-old with grandchildren, it's been a long time since Lisa Whelchel moved from her home state of Texas to Southern California to take a stab at show business. Still best known for her starring role as Blair Warner on The Facts of Life from 1979 through 1988, her first break came two years earlier on Walt Disney's The New Mickey Mouse Club.
Whelchel, 12 at the time, spent one season on the program before landing the aforementioned part on the long-running sitcom. With stories of child stars who go astray being so common as to almost be a cliche, it is refreshing to hear Whelchel's retelling of staying on the straight-and-narrow, so to speak, because of her faith.
In an interview with Fox News, the current host of MeTV's Collector's Call - which we wrote about here - says she was already a Christian by the time she got to Hollywood, having "had a very personal relationship with God" from the age of 10. And that, according to Whelchel, made all the difference.
"So when I moved to California, God was practically kind of a parent to me. He was my Heavenly Father. I trusted the things that He said were good for me and I knew to look out for the things that I knew weren't it for me."
Whelchel adds that her "faith and the community of (her) church" helped keep her from "paths that would have probably been very tempting to go down." You can check out the full Fox News article via this link to their website, and this one will take you to MeTV where you can find out how to watch season three of Whelchel's reality TV memorabilia collection show, Collector's Call.