LMN (Lifetime Movie Network) is running The Thorn Birds on its 25th anniversary during Thanksgiving Week.

We watched the first installment last night and were again taken with what a fetching child Sydney Penny was as little Meggie (and quite the accomplished little actress at age 12). Sydney Penny portrays Meggie with just the right touch of pathos and innocence.

Granted, little Meggie is only in the first episode and then Rachel Ward takes over the role as the grownup, but all that blind love, no matter the cost, going on in Meggie’s childhood is undoubtedly the root of her blind love for Father Ralph, no matter the cost.

You’ve got her mom (played by legendary actress, Jean Simmons) whose blind love for her first-born son, Frank, is really her love for Frank’s real father. Then you’ve got the equally legendary actress, Barbara Stanwyck, playing Meggie’s rich Aunt Mary, whose jealousy of the child (because she wants the priest all to herself) is nothing short of revolting.

On IMDB, in Sydney Penny’s trivia section there’s a note in the trivia section that reads: “Played a girl named Megan in love with a priest in both The Thorn Birds (1983) and Pale Rider (1985).”

Actually, Meggie Cleary’s first name in the book was spelled “Meghann.” In the film, when she is a child, they only call her Meghann a few times. When she marries Luke, he calls her Meghann as a means to sever her ties to her old life. It doesn’t work.