People often ask me if in real life I’m anything like Olivia Walton, the character I portray in the television series The Waltons. Well, we do have some things in common, Olivia and I. I’ve lived on a farm, as she does. And, like her, I’m used to big, tightly knit families.

When I was growing up I was the oldest of six daughters, and now I’m the mother of a brood that includes three teen-aged boys, a tankful of fish, a bird, four cats and three dogs.

But while Olivia’s spiritual strength—a strength that surely binds the Walton clan together—is inborn and comes easily to her, my own is the result of much groping, and there are times when I envy Olivia the serenity and assurance that her religion gives her.

Take the matter of prayer, for example, surely a basic thing in religion, perhaps the most basic of all. For people like Olivia, prayer seems to be as natural as breathing. In good times or bad they turn confidently toward God, walking across a solid bridge of faith. But not everyone is so fortunate.

For some people, prayer can be full of doubts and question marks. Are we really getting through to Someone when we pray? Is every prayer really heard? How can we know whether or not it’s being answered? For a long time I wondered about such things myself.

I’m pretty sure that as a child I got off on the wrong foot where prayer is concerned. Nobody was at fault. It was just happenstance.

We Learned children lived on a 21-acre farm in Connecticut where we had a goat named Rebecca, pigs, rabbits and chickens. It was a wonderful place to grow up, in many ways not unlike Walton’s Mountain.

Directly behind our farm was a Catholic seminary. It was supposed to be off limits for us kids, but one Sunday morning, dressed in jeans as usual, my sister Gretl and I climbed over the stone wall separating our property from the seminary.

Curious as cats, we wandered around the grounds until a kindly looking priest spotted us. “May I help you?” he asked.

“We were just looking around,” I said shyly. “We live over there.”

The priest smiled at the two little blond girls standing barefoot before him. “Why don’t you come in and see where we live.”

Our family wasn’t Catholic, but I was intrigued by the seminary tour Father Coffey gave us. We met other priests, too, and almost every Sunday after that, one of my sisters and I would go visit there.

Most of the things kind, old Father Coffey told us Learned girls are forgotten now. But one thing he said made a deep impression. “God,” he assured us earnestly, “answers all prayers.”

This was welcome news to me, because I had been praying fervently that my parents would give me a new bicycle. I wanted that bike desperately, and when Father Coffey told us that all prayers are answered, I knew—I was just positive—that I’d get my bike.

In fact, as I climbed back over the wall that day, I could visualize a chrome-plated red Schwinn, complete with a basket on the front, already sitting in our driveway.

But the bike never came. Instead, my parents gave one to my sister Dorit. All I got, I remember vividly, was a pair of new shoes.

I was crushed. How could this have happened? Wasn’t God supposed to give me what I asked for? From that moment on, as a child, I think I tended to equate prayer with disappointment and to regard it with doubt and hesitancy.

This attitude was reinforced a few years later when a new job for my father took our family from Connecticut to Europe. We hadn’t lived there very long before I began to be passionately interested in ballet.

My one ambition now was to become a ballerina, and all day I’d dance through the house praying fervent prayers. Eventually an audition was arranged for me in England with the famous Sadler’s Wells ballet company.

While waiting for some word, I kept reminding God of my aching desire. “You know how much I want this,” I told Him.

But, to my despair, word came that the ballet company didn’t want me. I was too tall, they said, and besides my feet were flat. Again I was heartbroken, but more than that, confused. If prayer as heartfelt as mine produced only negative results, something must be wrong somewhere.

Resignedly I accepted an alternative–drama school. And gradually, although it was difficult at first, I began to forget all about being a dancer. I discovered a whole new fascinating world—the world of the theater. In drama school, moreover, I met Peter Donat, the man who later became my husband.

By this time the thought surely should have crossed my mind that an apparently negative response to prayer can be a form of guidance. But I was too busy with the demanding task of building a stage career. It was not a spectacular one, but I found it exciting and satisfying.

By 1972 I was acting regularly with a San Francisco theatrical company. I had been with them for several years and was content with my work. But there were personal difficulties in my life that I could not seem to resolve, and deep inside I was miserable.

Once again I called out to my dim concept of God for help, and once again there seemed to be no answer. Then in the spring of that year my agent urged me to go to Los Angeles and look into television work.

The idea did not appeal to me. I flinched from the thought of leaving my three sons and my home in the most beautiful city in America to enter a new and highly competitive field where I had little experience.

But my agent was persistent and persuasive, and so finally—still praying for relief from my problems—I went to Hollywood and made several screen tests, including one for the role of a rural housewife in an upcoming CBS television series.

A month later, my agent called me again. “Michael,” he said, “they want you for The Waltons. You remember–it’s the show about a family living in the hills of West Virginia during the Depression. You’ll be the mother, and shooting starts immediately.”

My emotions were mixed, at best. The professional side of me was pleased, but the personal side wasn’t. Ahead of me I saw the daily grind of a television series, the loneliness and dislocation of being away from my family…and I wasn’t too sure that I could relate to this fictional Olivia Walton anyway.

She seemed so serene, so settled, so secure in her faith, whereas I…

As things turned out, all my fears were groundless. Almost from the very first day of filming, I found in the cast and crew of The Waltons warm and loving new friends, another close family to give me all the support and comfort I needed.

That first year was full of endless excitement: the tremendous success of the show, the unexpected Emmy that came my way. But something else excited me even more, and that was the evolving character of Olivia Walton herself.

It was very strange. An actress is supposed to “interpret” or “bring to life” a fictional character, not be influenced by one. And yet I found myself being profoundly influenced by Olivia Walton.

Like me, she often faced personal problems. Her problems were not exactly like mine, and yet I found myself admiring the way she was able to handle setbacks and difficulties through a strong and simple faith in God.

In show after show Olivia revealed to me—as indeed she keeps on doing—a basic truth that had eluded me for years—the truth that, as old Father Coffey said, God can and will answer prayers, in His own way and in His own time, not in ours.

Perhaps His answer to prayer is sometimes simply, “No,” as in the case of the bicycle that I’m sure now I didn’t need as much as my sister did. Perhaps it’s a negative that leads one in a new and better direction, as it did in my turning from ballet to the theater.

Perhaps it consists in meeting a new person (yes, even a fictional one) whose life and character make such an impact that your own life is changed.

Sometimes I am astonished at the change in myself. In my kitchen the other day, when I heard on the radio that an airliner with its landing gear stuck was circling the Los Angeles airport, I did what Olivia would have done. I knelt down on the kitchen floor and prayed for the safety of those people.

The plane finally landed safely. No one was hurt. Did my small prayers help? I know what Olivia would say. She would say that a Higher Power watches over us all–and that somehow prayer enables this Power to carry out the best designs for us.

Trusting. That’s what Father Coffey meant by prayer and that’s what Olivia Walton lives her life by. It’s taken time, but I’ve come to see that all prayers are answered–if one discovers first that prayer is acceptance and trust; it’s releasing doubt, and relying completely, in the end, on God’s ultimate wisdom.

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In Hollywood, they tell me, I’m known as “the man of a thousand voices.” Like most Hollywood labels, this is an exaggeration, but where voices are concerned I do have quite a few. When you hear Barney Rubble’s gravelly tones in The Flintstones on television, that’s me.

Such cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker, Porky Pig, Sylvester Cat and Tweedy are all close friends of mine for the very good reason that they have to borrow my vocal chords before they can say anything.

It’s one of those slightly zany jobs that are good fun, pay well and bring other people innocent pleasure, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

But a few years back the man of a thousand voices found himself listening to one small voice that he had never paid much attention to before. The voice was inside him.

I believe this same small voice is inside every one of us, but we’re too busy or preoccupied or self-satisfied to listen. Sometimes it takes a terrific jolt, and the silence that follows that kind of jolt, before the voice can make itself heard.

In my case, the jolt was nearly fatal. One night as I was hugging a curve in my little sports car, an automobile coming the other way went out of control. There was a head-on collision at a combined speed of about 90 miles per hour.

When they pried what was left of me out of the wreckage and rushed me to the hospital, they found that the only bone in my body that wasn’t broken was my left arm.

When I finally came out of the fog of anesthesia, back to a world of pain, the first thing I saw was Jack Benny sitting by my bed, looking miserable. I had worked with Jack for years; we were close friends.

I summoned all my strength and whispered, “I’m going to make it, Jack.” He said, “You’ll have to make it, because I can’t do my show without you.” I was too weak even to try to reply, but he saw the glitter of tears in my eyes, and knew that I understood.

In the weeks that followed, I think I survived chiefly on the power of prayer—other people’s prayers. I had never realized how much goodwill my cartoon characters had built up for me.

Hundreds of letters came from all over the world with prayers for my recovery. They came from Catholics, Protestants, Jews—even from Buddhists and Mohammedans. Children sent cards and coins and their favorite toys.

It was like being supported and sustained by a great flood tide of affection, of concern, of love. I’m convinced that it helped my shattered body begin to slowly heal itself. I also think it enveloped me in a kind of serenity that made it possible for me to hear a small, quiet, inner voice.

This voice did not speak to me in words; it was more like a sudden awareness of truths that had been around me all the time, truths that I had been too impatient and too self-centered to see.

For example, I had always taken my talent for voice characterizations pretty much for granted. After all, I had been using it for fun ever since grammar school, and professionally since 1938 when I signed a contract with Warner Brothers to do multiple voices on ‘Bugs Bunny’ cartoons.

But now I began to realize that talent is a gift, a gift that can be withdrawn at any time, an unmerited gift that can be repaid only by a sense of constant, humble gratitude to the Giver.

Another awareness was of a quiet but mighty undercurrent of justice that runs through human affairs. I began to see that the universe really is an echo chamber, where sooner or later the thoughts you have and the deeds you do are reflected back to you.

For example, some years before my accident, a friend of mine named Harry Lange had a heart attack while playing the part of Pancho in “The Cisco Kid.”

I offered to fill in for him for quite a long time—26 weeks, I think it was—and so during this period the studio was able to keep on sending his pay check to his wife.

Now, suddenly, the tables were turned; I was the one who was incapacitated. But like an echo, out of the past came an offer from Shep Menkin, a talented friend of mine: “Let me do your voices while you’re laid up; I’ll make sure that your family gets the money.”

As it turned out, I didn’t have to take Shep up on his offer.

For a whole year I remained immobilized in a full cast, but thanks to the devotion of my family, and the ingenuity of my wife who turned our home into a combined sanitarium and recording studio, I was able to make the sound tracks that kept 125 people at Warner’s working full-time.

I learned, too, during the long, slow period of recovery that pain is a solvent for all sorts of negative things. Antagonisms, for example.

There was one associate of mine whom I’d never liked; I thought him arrogant and conceited, and I’m afraid I showed my dislike rather plainly.

But when I met him again during my convalescence, my inner voice whispered to me that the main thing wrong with this man was that he was reacting to the hostility in me. So I told him frankly that I had misjudged him, that I was sorry, and that I hoped we could be friends.

His first reaction was one of amazement. His next reaction was one of warmth and self-accusation. Thus I learned that it is really quite easy to turn an enemy into a friend.

But the most valuable single thing that my inner voice taught me was the importance of expressing affection.

I don’t think that before my accident I was any more remiss than most people in this regard. But lying there in my cast, I recalled how my efforts in the past to tell people that I was grateful for their friendship, or to thank them for caring about me, seemed hopelessly inadequate.

And so I began to make a deliberate effort to set this right. To Jack Benny I said, “I want you to know how much I admire and appreciate and love you. I want you to know how much your friendship means to me. I’m grateful that my life has been spared so that I can tell you these things.”

I expressed such feelings to other people too. Maybe they were a little startled, or even momentarily embarrassed. But every time, I’d feel a surge of warmth and closeness that strengthened the bond between us.

Today I walk with a cane, but that’s a minor matter to a man who has spent a year in a cast. I go on participating, invisibly, in a lot of activity designed to bring joy and happiness to youngsters and young-oldsters.

Sometimes I’m the chirp of the pet dinosaur in the Flintstone Family, sometimes I’m the hiccough of a Disney cat. But believe me, I’m a happy hiccough and a cheerful chirp, because I’ve discovered that the more you express affection, the more you have to express, and the more comes back to you.

You don’t have to wait until you’re at death’s door to learn this, you know. Anyone can be a man or a woman of a thousand voices too. Because there are at least a thousand ways to say, “I love you”… and all of them are good.

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