CNN.com - Once 'Little House''s Nellie Oleson now comedienne

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Little no more

Former child star Alison Arngrim, pictured in July at an AIDS benefit in L.A., met her husband through volunteer work; (inset) the actress in her Nellie Oleson years.

(PEOPLE) -- Decades before Rosie O'Donnell earned the title the Queen of Nice, Alison Arngrim, who played nasty Nellie Oleson on "Little House on the Prairie," could have been crowned the Princess of Mean.

Only 11 when she won the role on the family series (which debuted in 1974), Arngrim, who grew up in a family of "itinerant actors," made an art of playing the vicious character. "I really set out to terrorize as many people as I could," she says with a laugh. "I figured if I can't be adorable, I'll be frightening."

Years later, Arngrim, now 40, says she's still identified as the character she made famous. "I have people like, 'Oh, I heard you're such a bitch,'" she says, laughing. "It's hard on my friends. They have to defend me." One of those friends is Melissa Gilbert, who played her archenemy on the show but in real life has been one of her closest pals since their "Little House" days. "We banded together and refused to compete with each other and became best friends," says Arngrim.

Arngrim, who has "been doing standup for 8 million years," decided to capitalize on people's fascination with her "Little House" character by putting together an interactive one-woman show called "Confessions of a Prairie Bitch." She first performed it at New York City's Club Fez in June to a sold-out house and plans to return to the Big Apple at Christmastime. "We're thinking like a Nasty Noel Christmas with Nellie," she says.

MORE STORIES   RESOURCES   E-MAIL Want more from PEOPLE.COM? Sign up  for free e-mails

But life isn't all about laughs for Arngrim: In 1986, when "Little House" costar Steve Tracy, who played her husband, died of complications from AIDS, Arngrim began working with AIDS and HIV services. "I kept finding there were more things I could do," she says. "I saw there was such a lack of services. So I sort of dove in and tried to fix things." Arngrim became a project manager for Tuesday's Child, an organization for children with HIV and AIDS, and for seven years hosted AIDS Vision, a cable access show produced by the AIDS Project Los Angeles. "I was sort of the Barbara Walters of AIDS," she says.

Today, Arngrim is still heavily involved with AIDS work but has refocused her energies on acting. She recently finished shooting two independent films, including "The Last Place on Earth," a drama costarring Billy Dee Williams and Phyllis Diller, and appeared in a play in Hollywood called "Sirena, Queen of the Tango," which she describes as "a hoot and a half."

Married to musician Bob Schoonover, 53, since 1993 (they met in 1986 when he was the director of an AIDS hotline where she was volunteering), Arngrim jokes that she "got to be a groupie in my thirties," referring to his rock group, Catahoula. "I put on lots of makeup and tight pants, I carry the guitar and say, 'I'm with the band.'"