Alison Arngrim will forever be known to most people as bad girl Nellie Oleson on “Little House on the Prairie.” Now 46, the one-time child star figures if you can’t beat the rap, make the most of it. Instead of moaning about how tough it is to transition to adult stardom unless you’re Jodie Foster, Arngrim has taken put together an act and taken it on the road. “I do my stand-up comedy, I do my one-woman show called ‘Confessions of a Prairie Bitch’ which has become quite successful,” she said last week. “The title says it all. show, I do have a facsimile of the wig and we make fun of that and ask,’How do I look now? Do I look the same?’ I tell people I had myself laminated in the early 80s.”

Even without the wig, the actress hasn’t really changed much since those days.

“Unlike a lot of Hollywood, I never had any work done or got a nose job so I just kind of look exactly the same which is a little spooky,” she said. “Some days I go out and no one says anything and other days, it's like they put out an APB - I can’t go 10 feet without: ‘You’re Nellie Oleson! what are you doing here?’ It’s pretty cool.”

She has kept busy with her stage act which is popular in France and a lot of other unlikely places: “I’m going to be up with the Vancouver Gay Men’s Chorus in February and then I’m doing a prison guard's convention in Las Vegas. I’m sort of all over the map.”

She’s also kept busy with various television guest appearances and a decades-long dedication to AIDS/HIV activism. I saw her at the recetn Ribbon of Hope Awards where she was part of a dramatic presentation paying tribute to the anniversary of ACTUP. I dunno why, but I thought Alison was there as a lesbian and not as a straight ally. She thought this was funny: "No. I'm married to a guy! I'm sort of a human ally."

But she does have strong ties to the LGBT community and there are deep reasons why.

"A child of the 60s, I was never raised to divide people up into black and white and gay and straight so it was always sort of stunning to me when I grew up and found out that other people really did put people in little boxes and were reallty ugly about it. I've never approved of that. When AIDS hit, my friend Steve Tracy, who played my husband on 'Little House,' died in 1986. I lost a lot of friends. I grew up in Hollywood and it really decimated that entertainment industry and a lot of the people I grew up with. So it was really hard on me and I had to do something so i began volunteering at AIDS project Los Angeles and it really kind of escalated because there really weren't that many people speaking out in 1986. So a lot of people were afraid to talk about AIDS at all and just really didn't want to talk about the issue, for some bizarre reason, were willing to talk about it with someone from 'Little House on the Prairie.' With Nellie Olseon it was OK. So i was able to reach people that other people had trouble reaching. I said, 'Fine, use me, send me. If they won;t listen to you, they'll listen to Nellie. We don't know why but they will."

Arngrin, who appeared in more than 100 episodes of “Little House” between 1974 and 1982, was in the headlines just last month when she made Mr. Blackwell’s infamous worst dressed list. This is something else she has a sense of humor about.

“He said I looked like a fashion correspondent for the 1940s Farmers Almanac,” she said, laughing. “I kind of had it coming. There was this fabulous event in Tombstone, a ‘Little House on the Prairie’ cast reunion, and it was a hootenanny which encourage really bad western wear. I did have on a particularly henious outfit involving an orange skirt and a purple top and a cowboy hat., So, yes, I got to be number 10. I was getting calls from every newspaper, every magazine and from friends who were driving down the street and heard it on the radio and nearly totaled the car.”