Where Is Lara Jean Marshall Now? From The Saddle Club to the Airwaves

By CelebPaid Research · Updated October 7, 2026 · 8 min read

Thematic illustration: horse riding, evoking Marshall's years on the equestrian series The Saddle Club. This is a generic illustration, not a photo of the subject.Image via Wikimedia Commons

For a generation of horse-mad kids, The Saddle Club was sacred text — the Australian series about three best friends, their ponies, and life at Pine Hollow Stables. Lara Jean Marshall played Lisa Atwood, the smart overachiever of the trio, from 2001 to 2003. Then, like so many child actors, she faced the question of what comes after the riding boots come off.

Her answer took her across the Pacific and back: a move to Los Angeles, a return to Melbourne after the pandemic, and a new career behind a radio microphone in regional Victoria. This is the verified story of where Lara Jean Marshall is now.

The Peak: Lisa Atwood on The Saddle Club (2001–2003)

The Saddle Club, based on Bonnie Bryant's beloved book series, ran for three seasons and became an international hit — one of Australia's most successful children's exports. Marshall's Lisa Atwood was the studious one of the central trio, the straight-A student whose organizational skills held the group together. It was a defining role for a young actress, and it came with the full apparatus of children's television fame: fan mail, merchandise, and recognition from a generation of young riders.

Marshall's other acting work included an appearance on The Doctor Blake Mysteries, the Australian period drama — a sign that she was capable of transitioning to adult roles. But the transition never fully happened. Like many actors whose fame is tied to a specific age and a specific show, she found the post-child-star landscape difficult to navigate, and eventually she stopped navigating it.

The LA Years and the Return

After acting, Marshall did what countless Australian performers do: she moved to Los Angeles. LA is the industry's gravitational center, and for a former child actress looking to keep working — or to figure out what else she might do — it is the obvious destination. Details of her LA years are sparse, which itself says something: there were no breakout roles, no tabloid chapters, no public reinvention. It was, by all accounts, a private period of figuring things out.

The pandemic changed the calculus for expatriates everywhere, and Marshall was no exception. She returned to Melbourne after the COVID shutdowns — part of a wave of Australians who came home when the world closed down. The return marked the end of the LA chapter and the beginning of something genuinely new.

The Airwaves: Radio Announcer in Ballarat

Today Lara Jean Marshall works as a radio announcer for Power FM in Ballarat, Victoria — a regional city about 100 kilometers west of Melbourne. It is a real, working media job: early mornings, live reads, community connection. And it makes a certain sense as a second act for a former child actress. Radio uses the voice, the timing, and the audience instincts that acting teaches — without the cameras, the typecasting, or the age pressure.

She has discussed the journey in interviews, including a BuzzFeed Saddle Club cast then-and-now feature and an appearance on iHeart's "Is It Just Me?" podcast — the kind of reflective, low-key media that suits someone who has made peace with a smaller spotlight. She has no personal Wikipedia page, and her public presence is that of a working broadcaster, not a former star trading on nostalgia.

There is something fitting about the trajectory. The girl who played the organized, responsible one on television grew up to hold down a responsible job in media — just behind a microphone instead of in front of a camera.

Where Is Lara Jean Marshall Now?

As of 2026, Lara Jean Marshall is a radio announcer for Power FM in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. She left acting behind after her LA years, returned to Australia after the pandemic, and now works in regional radio.

Her story is the unglamorous, admirable version of the child-actor second act: no scandal, no desperate comeback — just a person who found good work and got on with it.

The Saddle Club Phenomenon

To understand Marshall's fame, you have to understand the property. The Saddle Club began as a book series by Bonnie Bryant — dozens of novels about three girls and their horses at Pine Hollow Stables — that sold millions of copies to exactly the audience most likely to memorize television schedules. When the Australian television adaptation arrived in 2001, it inherited a built-in readership of horse-mad kids and converted them into viewers with ruthless efficiency.

The show ran for three seasons and became one of Australia's most successful children's exports, airing in the UK, North America, and beyond. Its formula was deceptively simple: friendship, horses, and low-stakes adventure, executed with sincerity. For its young audience, Pine Hollow was a real place — and Lisa Atwood, Marshall's character, was the friend you wanted on your side: the organized, brainy one who kept the trio out of trouble. Typecasting does not get more wholesome than that, which is partly why the role was so hard to escape.

The equestrian element gave the show a second life that most children's series never get. Horse kids do not just watch; they join riding clubs, buy the merchandise, and pass the fandom down to younger siblings. The Saddle Club fandom has proven remarkably durable — cast reunions and then-and-now features still draw engaged audiences decades later, because the show is tied to a lifestyle (riding) rather than just a viewing habit. Marshall's Lisa remains a touchstone for women who grew up wanting to be the smart one in the stable.

That durability is also what makes the post-show careers of its cast so closely watched. When BuzzFeed assembled its Saddle Club cast then-and-now feature, it was feeding a genuine hunger: what happened to the kids from Pine Hollow? Marshall's answer — LA, then home, then radio — is the least dramatic of the bunch, and arguably the healthiest. No reinvention performed for cameras, no desperate clinging to the role. Just a person who did the thing, left the thing, and found other work.

Her appearance on iHeart's "Is It Just Me?" podcast fits the same pattern of low-key reflection. These are not the media moves of someone trying to reignite a career; they are the moves of someone comfortable enough with the past to talk about it without needing anything from it. The girl who played the responsible one grew into an adult with the same quality — and found, in regional radio, a job where responsibility, reliability, and a good voice are the entire job description.

The girl who played the responsible one grew into an adult with the same quality — and found, in regional radio, a job where responsibility, reliability, and a good voice are the entire job description. It is not the ending the tabloids would write, but it is the one that lasts: steady work, a real audience, and a life that belongs to her. From Pine Hollow to the airwaves of Ballarat, Marshall found the rarest thing in the child-star economy: an ordinary, satisfying career that uses everything she learned and asks for nothing she is not willing to give.

Then vs Now: Two Chapters

Lara Jean Marshall traded the saddle for the studio — and found a career where her voice still reaches an audience every day.

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