LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shannen Doherty, the “Beverly Hills, 90210″ star whose life and profession have been roiled by sickness and tabloid tales, has died at 53.
Doherty died Saturday, in line with a press release from her publicist, Leslie Sloane. She had had breast most cancers for years.
“The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and pal was surrounded by her family members in addition to her canine, Bowie. The household asks for his or her privateness presently to allow them to grieve in peace,” Sloane mentioned in a press release. The information was first reported by Individuals journal.
Her sickness was publicly revealed in a lawsuit filed in 2015 in opposition to her former enterprise managers, through which she alleged they mismanaged her cash and allowed her medical health insurance to lapse. She later shared intimate particulars of her remedy following a single mastectomy. In December 2016, she posted a photograph of her first day of radiation, calling the remedy “horrifying” for her.
In February 2020, Doherty revealed that the most cancers had returned and she was at stage 4. She mentioned she got here ahead as a result of her well being circumstances might come out in court docket. The actor had sued insurance coverage large State Farm after her California residence was broken in a hearth in 2018.
A local of Memphis, Tennessee, Doherty moved to Los Angeles along with her household at age 7 and, inside a number of years, grew to become an actor.
“It was fully my choice,” she instructed The Related Press in a 1994 interview. “My mother and father by no means pushed me into something. They help me. It actually wouldn’t matter if I used to be knowledgeable soccer participant — they’d nonetheless be as supportive and loving.”
As a baby star, she labored steadily in such TV sequence as “Little Home on the Prairie,” through which she performed Jenny Wilder. She detoured as an adolescent to the massive display in “Women Simply Need to Have Enjoyable” (1985) and “Heathers.”
In 1990, the doe-eyed, dark-haired actor gained her breakout position as Brenda Walsh in producer Aaron Spelling’s hit teenage melodrama set in posh Beverly Hills. She and Jason Priestley’s Brandon, Brenda’s twin brother, have been fish-out-of-water Midwesterners.
However Doherty’s fame got here with media scrutiny and accounts of outbursts, consuming and impulsiveness — the latter most notably after a really temporary marriage to George Hamilton’s son.
She left “90210″ on the finish of its fourth season in 1994 (the present aired till 2000), reportedly eliminated by Spelling due to conflicts along with her co-stars and persistent lateness.
However in her 1994 AP interview, Doherty described her life as peaceable.
“It should be, should you choose up the Enquirer and discover the one factor they’ll write about me is that I put in a pay cellphone subsequent to my home and was seen at Stroud’s (a reduction bed-and-bath chain) shopping for $1,400 price of mattress linens and wouldn’t go to an costly retailer,” she mentioned. “It should be calm in the event that they’re pulling that stuff out of their heads.”
Three years later, in 1997, Doherty was sentenced to anger-management counseling by a Beverly Hills Municipal Courtroom choose after she allegedly smashed a beer bottle onto a person’s windshield throughout a quarrel. In one other authorized scrape, she pleaded no contest after a 2001 drunken driving arrest and was ordered to serve 5 days in a work-release program.
Doherty reunited with Spelling when he forged her in 1998 as Prue Halliwell in “Charmed.” In an AP interview that 12 months, the actor expressed regrets about her previous.
“I did carry lots of it on myself,” Doherty mentioned. “I don’t assume I can level fingers and say, ‘Oh, YOU’RE in charge.’ And I don’t try this with myself, both. As a result of I used to be simply rising up.”
Her persona was “grotesquely misconstrued” by the media, Doherty added.
Spelling mentioned on the time that their relationship was by no means as dangerous as some made it appear.
“We had a number of bumps alongside the highway, however golly, who doesn’t?” mentioned Spelling, who died in 2006. “Every little thing Shannon did was blown out of proportion by the rag sheets.”
Doherty co-starred with Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano in “Charmed” from 1998-2001, at which level her character was changed by one performed by Rose McGowan. Doherty appeared within the “90210″ sequel sequence seven years later, together with unique sequence star Jennie Garth, and competed on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2010. She additionally labored on the third “Beverly Hills, 90210″ reboot, known as “BH90210,” a meta send-up of the present that aired for one season in 2019.
Doherty struggled to recapture her “Beverly Hills, 90210″ star standing, however labored in big-screen movies together with “Mallrats” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Again” and in such TV motion pictures as “A Burning Ardour: The Margaret Mitchell Story,” through which she performed the “Gone with the Wind” writer. A nadir was “Blindfold: Acts of Obsession,” an erotic thriller reverse Judd Nelson.
Doherty’s lawsuit in opposition to her ex-business managers was settled in 2016. She was open in regards to the toll that most cancers was taking up her. She posted images that confirmed the baldness that adopted remedy and, in an August 2016 interview with “Leisure Tonight,” shared her fears.
“The unknown is all the time the scariest half,” she mentioned. “Is the chemo going to work? Is the radiation going to work?” she mentioned. “Ache is manageable, residing and not using a breast is manageable, it’s the fear of your future and the way your future goes to have an effect on the individuals that you simply love.”
Doherty’s second marriage, in 2002, was to Rick Salomon, who was concerned in a sex-tape incident with Paris Hilton. The wedding was annulled inside a 12 months. In 2011, Doherty married photographer Kurt Iswarienko. She filed for divorce in April 2023.
