Lisa Ann Walter Calls “Abbott Elementary”'s Season 4 Renewal First Time She Felt 'Safe' in Her Career (Exclusive)

"I never felt like I was on rock solid, like, 'I got this now. I could relax,'" the actress tells PEOPLE

Lisa Ann Walter captivated viewers as beloved housekeeper Chessy in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, and she’s continued to pop up on TV and movie screens ever since. The actress also released the book The Best Thing About My Ass Is That It's Behind Me in 2011 and has performed standup comedy over the years.

But Walter, 62, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue that she didn’t feel secure in her career until ABC picked up her latest show Abbott Elementary — in which she plays rough-around-the-edges second grade teacher and diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan Melissa Schemmenti — for a fourth season in February.

“I wasn't a star. I was the woman that made you cry in The Parent Trap and you're still looking for a job the next week,” Walter says. “So honestly, feeling safe? The season four pickup of Abbott.”

Related: Abbott Elementary's Lisa Ann Walter on Her Friendship with Her Ex-Husband 24 Years After He Came Out to Her

The job allowed Walter to take her four kids — Jordan, 36, Delia, 32, and twins Spencer and Simon, 23 — on the first major family vacation on her dime last summer when they traveled to Italy.

“Just because you're in a movie doesn't mean you're rich,” she explains. “I had not been able to afford taking my kids on a vacation outside of taking them to the San Diego Zoo, or to go skiing locally. This was the first time I was able to have everybody go on a trip.”

Walter wanted her children to see Europe like she got to as a kid growing up traveling with her dad while he worked for the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

“We traveled all over the place to all the countries in Europe, just soaking up everything — museums and all the beauty of these countries,” the Maryland native recalls. “I'm so lucky that I have a visceral memory of the Sistine Chapel and what that looks like and feels like when you're in something and you think, ‘Somebody laid on their back and painted that? How bad did this guy's back hurt?’ When I was 6, I stood in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and went, 'My house is going to look like this someday.' And I meant it.”

She returned to the States to study drama at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and then moved to New York City to pursue acting. “Then, I got pregnant pretty soon thereafter,” Walter says of expecting her first child with her first husband, Sam Baum.

Life as a stay-at-home mom didn’t appeal to Walter, so she started trying to get Jordan work as a baby model “so I could stay busy,” she says. “And I remember Sam said to me, ‘If you spend all of your time pushing your son to be the main baby in a commercial or something and you don't get on stage, you are going to be a hateful person to be around.’”

So Walter started writing standup comedy material and began touring. “Female comics were rare in those days,” the mom of four says. “There was no Time's Up, there was no Me Too. It was very predatory. So it was unusual to have a working mom comic.”

Walter worked up until three days before she had her daughter and hit the road again five weeks later “because we had bills,” she says. “I did a lot of driving back from gigs in upstate New York at 3:00 in the morning because I didn't want to spend $26 on a crappy hotel. I needed that money for milk.”

From there, Walter moved out to Los Angeles in the mid-‘90s to star in the short-lived sitcoms My Wildest Dream and My Life’s Work. “I never felt like I was on rock solid, like, ‘I got this now. I could relax,’” Walter says. “Even when I did movies, it's like, our job is just a job and then it stops.”

Walter considers herself “incredibly lucky” to have starred in The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan and Dennis Quaid. “So many people have such affinity for that character in that movie,” she says of her character, Chessy. “And I always said, if I never did anything else, I was blessed to have that. I'm pretty sure I would get an In Memoriam at the Oscars.”

Related: Lisa Ann Walter Wants to Do a Parent Trap Remake with Lindsay Lohan and Have Her on Abbott Elementary (Exclusive)

She’s worked steadily since then but says she “didn't have any inkling” that Abbott “was around the corner.” In fact, Walter took an auditioning class right before landing the Abbott gig to better learn how to secure parts in a post-COVID world.

“I had not been in class in a long time and a girlfriend of mine said to me, ‘You know how to act. Maybe you need a refresher because auditioning on Zoom is so much different, sending in self tapes,’” Walter recalls. “So I went and took this class with Leigh Kilton-Smith and the advice she had was so much about getting out of your own way.”

Now, in her third season of Abbott with a SAG win under her belt, Walter feels like, “I think I'm good, for a few years anyway. And maybe that's because I don't have as many years left.  And that's the thing I just say, 'You just can't quit.' You don't know when your moment's going to happen. You just can't give up. You have to get out of your own way and just do that thing.”

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Abbott Elementary returns to ABC on Wednesday, April 10, at 9 p.m. ET.

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