Others should benefit from my disappointment.

Most people don’t know, but Ally Sheedy was a published author before she became an child actress, she probably had a few choice things to say herself.

Having just read through it, it's a hard one to explain. It's the blurry line of where inspiration stops and plagiarism starts. It's easier with writing and books, being able to compare one written text to another and note the similar sentence structures, phrases etc.

The author mentioned here did plagiarize, but it almost comes across as reusing someone's anecdote, to me anyway. I've alluded to people I know; their mannerisms, their backgrounds, their stories etc in my writing (not that I'm published, it's just for fun). When an anecdote is told orally and then you rejig it to fit a character or narrative in your story, most people wouldn't view this as plagiarism. We know of lots of authors who have used real-life people and their experiences as the basis of their novels. With already published text though, well, it's a far more clear-cut case. The question is whether it's done knowingly, maliciously, as a homage or just by genuine unconscious osmosis of others' works.

I don't know where this author falls. I would say that the text is far too similar to be some unconscious thing. Seems like the blog writer doesn't know either.