Tragic Details About Melissa Joan Hart's Life

Melissa Joan Hart has been famous for nearly her entire life, which means that the vast majority of her experiences have been publicly documented. And while Hart's negative personal and career moments have been greatly overshadowed by her success, no one who starts working in Hollywood before puberty escapes entirely unscathed. Hart has faced a number of challenges, including the deaths of pivotal acting role models, the unfair consequences of transgressing public expectations, and even a devastating connection to a school shooting.

Hart began her professional career at 4 years old in a national commercial for a doll meant for bathtubs. Dozens more commercials followed, and the star was even the template for a drawing that appeared on Quilted Northern toilet paper packages as a child. Fame struck when Hart was cast as the titular character on the Nickelodeon hit series "Clarissa Explains It All," which aired from 1991 to 1994, and expanded when "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" — a series in which she stars and which her co-owned production company produced — made its debut in 1996.

Hart has plenty of other projects on her acting resume — most notably "Melissa & Joey," her TV series with fellow teen star Joey Lawrence — but she has branched out, too. Hart has published a memoir,  competed on "Dancing With the Stars," opened (and closed) a candy shop, and more. Hart has had many highs in her life, but has unfortunately had many lows too.

Melissa Joan Hart had an overall positive experience as a child actor, and she has expressed this on many occasions, especially around the time of the explosive documentary "Quiet on Set" — which detailed abuses at Nickelodeon — was released. But while Hart may have been protected from emotional and sexual abuse, "Clarissa Explains It All" being filmed in Florida allowed people to take advantage of her in other ways. "It was really hard — I won't say it wasn't — but the only thing I would complain about was that in Orlando, I don't know if the child labor laws were the best. So I was worked probably longer hours than I should have been," she told Scary Mommy.

Beyond the workload, there was also the added pressure of being the breadwinner for an extremely large family. Hart has spoken about having to be financially (and sometimes even physically, when her mom went on vacation) responsible for her seven younger siblings — and though she does not necessarily see that as tragic, any reasonable person would say she shouldered far too much responsibilities for a youngster. "As I got older, some people were like, 'Oh, that's not right. You should have kept your money,'" Hart explained on the podcast "Pop Culture Moms" (via People). "And I was like ... I would rather put food on the table and make sure my siblings had good clothes and bicycles for Christmas, you know, things like that. So, I definitely felt like I wanted to be responsible for them."

There is an immense amount of pressure placed onto young celebrities, especially those associated with a brand like Disney or Nickelodeon. Things are perhaps most complicated during the years where these stars attempt to navigate the transition from child star to adult professional, and they are especially complex for young women. From Miley Cyrus to Lindsay Lohan to Bella Thorne, countless young stars have been critiqued, mocked, and labelled for daring to publicly embrace their sexuality. These women are often positioned against the "good girls" who agree to live their lives according to Mickey Mouse's expectations well into their 20s, and Melissa Joan Hart is squarely in the latter camp. Still, even she has felt the sting of a temporarily attached scarlet letter.

The situation occurred when Hart was in her early 20s and appearing on "Sabrina the Teenage Witch." Hart was on the verge of a breakup and had just been dropped from a big movie when she received unsettling news from her lawyer at a party. "My lawyer shows up and goes, 'You did a photo shoot for Maxim magazine?' I'm like: 'Yes, I did.' They're like: 'Well, you're being sued and fired from your show, so don't talk to the press, don't do anything,'" she recalled on "Pod Meets World" (via Entertainment Weekly). Archie Comics' legal case was weak — Hart was in skivvies on the cover, not nude — so an apology got her out of it, but Hart called it "the worst day of my life."

If the powers-that-be can be scary, then the public can be downright terrifying. This is a lesson that Melissa Joan Hart has unfortunately had to learn, as she has been the target of much online hate over the years. And that is not referring to the usual mean tweets that most celebrities have to deal with, but severe bullying and even threats to her safety. The vitriol is typically centered around politics and social issues, since Hart is an outspoken Republican who speaks often of her faith and policy beliefs. Her conservative values have at times angered those on the left, while her support for things like gun control and LGBTQ+ rights have angered some of her fellow Christian Republicans.

For instance, the star received backlash from conservative fans when she posted on Facebook in support of an anti-bullying movement for queer youth. But that was in 2014 and, by then, Hart knew the drill. Two years prior, Hart found herself on the receiving end of death threats after she posted a tweet supporting Mitt Romney (when he was running against Barack Obama for president). "I got called every name in the book," she recollected on "HuffPost Live" in 2013. "[People said] they hope I die, and that they hope my children are gay, which is somehow supposed to be some sort of punishment ... The hate was really unbelievable just from that simple tweet. Just by saying I was voting."

One of the most lovable things about Melissa Joan Hart is how upfront she is with her emotions, even the negative ones. For example, she has said that she still feels immense guilt decades after taking an underaged Britney Spears to her first club. While most people cannot relate to the specific regret stemming from enabling a fellow child star on their path to unhealthy partying, Hart has also shared more universal tragedies with the public. In particular, she has been forthright about the grief she experienced upon the death of two of her most beloved co-stars: Martin Mull and Doug Sheehan. While the death of a much-older co-star may not seem like a full-on tragedy, losing two of these figures within the span of weeks could not have been easy.

Hart seems to have taken Mull's death especially hard, and her tribute reflected both the great respect she felt for her "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" co-star as well as his impact on her life. "He once told me that he takes every job he's offered just in case the train comes to an end, which in this business tends to halt quickly. But he was an artist who liked to paint and build things with his hands, a musician and a wonderful man who I am better for knowing," she wrote in her Instagram tribute, which noted that Hart had some of Mull's artwork hanging in her home. Hart posted a shorter (but still loving) tribute to Sheehan 12 days later.

While Melissa Joan Hart is thankful to have never experienced the pain of losing a loved one to gun violence, she has come way too close for comfort. When she and her family lived in Connecticut, Hart was very close to the horrific Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, where 26 people were killed in 2012. The actor told Scary Mommy that her kids have gone through three active lockdown drills, and that she is educating herself about gun safety. "I'm learning more about different laws and bills, and I'm going to the shooting range now and learning about guns. It's such a tricky world right now. Things feel so dire, but have they always been and I just missed it?," she asked.

Hart was in even closer proximity to a shooting in 2023, when she was on the way to parent-teacher conferences at her children's Nashville school. Their school happens to be located next to The Covenant School, where an active shooter was on the loose. Noticing something was not right as they were approaching, Hart and her husband Mark Wilkerson got out of the car and unexpectedly became enmeshed in the tragedy. "We helped a class of kindergartners across a busy highway. They were climbing out of the woods. They were trying to escape the shooter situation at their school," Hart said in an Instagram video. "So, we helped all these tiny little kids cross the road and get (to) their teachers." Six people died that day.