Shannen Doherty, the quintessential ’90s insurgent who starred within the TV mega-hits “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Charmed,” has died after an almost decade-long battle with most cancers. She was 53.
Doherty died Saturday, the Related Press reported. Final June, the actor revealed her most cancers had unfold to her mind and in November, to her bones.
Her publicist, Leslie Sloane, introduced the information in a press release to Individuals journal.
“It’s with a heavy coronary heart that I affirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty,” Sloane mentioned.
“On Saturday, July 13, she misplaced her battle with most cancers after a few years of preventing the illness,” Sloane continued. “The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and good friend was surrounded by her family members in addition to her canine, Bowie. The household asks for his or her privateness at the moment to allow them to grieve in peace.”
The “90210” star first went public together with her breast most cancers prognosis in 2015, when she filed a lawsuit in opposition to her former administration agency for breach of contract and negligence. She said that the agency had let her medical health insurance lapse in 2014 and that she couldn’t re-enroll in insurance coverage advantages till 2015.
By March 2015, medical doctors found “invasive breast most cancers metastatic to a minimum of one lymph node,” which she mentioned had the possibility to unfold whereas she was unable to go to a physician as a result of insurance coverage lapse.
In 2017, the actor shared in an emotional Instagram put up that the illness had gone into remission. “As each single one among my fellow most cancers household is aware of, the subsequent 5 years is essential. Reoccurrences occur on a regular basis. … So with a coronary heart that’s definitely lighter, I wait.”
4 years after Doherty’s preliminary prognosis, whereas taking pictures Fox’s revival of “Beverly Hills, 90210,” she was identified with Stage 4 breast most cancers however stored it quiet for almost a yr.
“My most cancers got here again,” Doherty revealed on “Good Morning America” in February 2020. “It’s a bitter capsule to swallow in a variety of methods. There are days the place I say, why me? After which I’m going, properly, why not me? Who else apart from me deserves this? None of us do.”
In June 2023, the actor shared an intimate take a look at the fact of most cancers in a video taken at Cedars-Sinai Medical Middle in Los Angeles. A crying Doherty wore a radiotherapy masks as she underwent her first radiation therapy, revealing that the most cancers had unfold to her mind.
“My concern is clear. I’m extraordinarily claustrophobic and there was rather a lot occurring in my life,” she captioned the video. “That is what most cancers can seem like.”
By November 2023, Doherty revealed that the most cancers had unfold to her bones. “I don’t need to die,” she informed Individuals 4 days earlier than Thanksgiving. “I’m not finished with residing. I’m not finished with loving. I’m not finished with creating. I’m not finished with hopefully altering issues for the higher. I’m simply not — I’m not finished.”
Doherty was born right into a Southern Baptist household in Memphis, Tenn., on April 12, 1971, the youngest of Tom and Rosa Doherty’s two kids. Her household moved to the prosperous Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County when she was 6, however Doherty credited her early-onset self-assurance to gender disparities she witnessed within the South throughout the Seventies.
“I noticed how girls have been handled,” she informed Individuals in 1992. “And I wasn’t going to be handled like that.”
With the household settled on the West Coast, Doherty carried out in a church play at age 10 — and in an only-in-L.A. second, a Hollywood agent attended that play (he was a good friend of the director). He noticed potential within the younger Doherty. Inside weeks, she made her industrial debut for a phone firm.
“My dad and mom weren’t very passionate about me going into present enterprise, however I used to be,” Doherty informed the Orange County Register in 1995.
She landed her first main position at 11, when Michael Landon employed her to play the brave and spirited Jenny Wilder on “Little Home on the Prairie.” “That present modified my life,” Doherty informed the outlet, including that Landon suggested her on the time by no means to let anybody stroll throughout her, and to be a robust lady.
Shannen Doherty starred as Heather Duke within the 1988 film “Heathers.”
(Archive Images / Getty Photos)
As she entered her teen years, Doherty’s raven locks and informal moxie made her a simple selection for “dangerous lady”-type roles, corresponding to Heather Duke — her first main movie position, within the 1988 darkish comedy “Heathers.” But it surely was her portrayal of the fiercely pushed Beverly Hills transplant Brenda Walsh on Aaron Spelling’s pop-culture phenomenon “Beverly Hills, 90210” that catapulted her to stardom.
At a time when programming aimed on the teen demographic was comparatively healthful and uncontroversial, the Fox sequence about privileged younger individuals residing in one of many nation’s most costly ZIP codes was laying the muse for the teenager drama style as we now understand it, with its then-revolutionary exploration of the social and sexual drama of highschool life. It might go on to air for 10 seasons and spawn the profitable spinoff “Melrose Place,” the CW reboot “90210” and, later, a 2019 meta revival, “BH90210,” that includes a lot of the forged enjoying heightened variations of their real-life personas as they work to get a reboot of the prime-time cleaning soap off the bottom.
But it surely’s onerous to overstate the very ’90s fan mania that surrounded the sequence in its early years, and the way it formed the way in which Doherty navigated her appreciable fame. The angsty teen drama starred Doherty alongside Tori Spelling, Jason Priestley, Luke Perry, Brian Austin Inexperienced, Jennie Garth, Gabrielle Carteris and Ian Ziering. The forged of worship-ready teen idols and Doherty, particularly, have been plum targets for tabloid fodder.
“The teenager heartthrobs of Fox’s ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ … garnered the most important cheers and screams from the teenager followers who lined the streets,” The Instances mentioned in a 1991 Emmys pink carpet story. “Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty … arrived collectively hand in hand and have been attacked en masse by the photographers, as was their costar Luke Perry.”
Clockwise from prime proper: “90210” stars Luke Perry, Shannen Doherty, Jason Priestley, Gabrielle Carteris, Tori Spelling, Brian Austin Inexperienced, Jennie Garth and Ian Ziering.
(Fox Broadcasting Co.)
However whereas her TV character was coping with points like having intercourse for the primary time and failing driver’s ed, Doherty was incomes an off-camera status as a reckless social gathering lady, spending late hours with co-star Tori Spelling at golf equipment together with Hollywood’s since-closed Roxbury. She butted heads on the set with co-star Jennie Garth, who later in life would stay her good friend.
“Uncontrolled!” screamed the headline on the quilt of Individuals journal in June 1993, teasing to a Doherty story inside.
“Since debuting on ‘90210’ in 1990, Doherty has left a path of dangerous money owed, trashed properties, exhausted friendships and wasted relationships,” the story mentioned. “When challenged, say a number of individuals who know her, she is more likely to reply with a menacing, ‘You don’t know who you’re f—ing with!’ ”
In her early 20s and on the peak of newfound fame, Doherty’s romantic flings and flops performed out within the tabloids too. In early 1993, she was briefly engaged to cosmetics inheritor Dean Jay Issue earlier than a messy publicized cut up months later. In October of the identical yr, she tied the knot with Ashley Hamilton, the son of actor George Hamilton, after figuring out him for just a few weeks. They divorced six months later.
However the individuals who labored carefully with the “90210” star dismissed the noise and sang the actor’s praises. Priestley, who performed Doherty’s twin brother, Brandon, informed Individuals in 1992 that every one the tales about his castmate have been grossly exaggerated. “She’s a really clever younger lady who isn’t afraid to talk her thoughts,” he mentioned.
Aaron Spelling described her to the outlet as “the perfect younger actress I’ve seen in a very long time,” including that she was an trustworthy one who wore her feelings on her sleeve. “In the event you ask her a direct query, she’ll offer you a direct reply.”
And her co-star Tori Spelling, who portrayed Donna Martin on the cleaning soap, echoed her father’s sentiments however famous that Doherty’s status “hurts her emotions a bit.”
Doherty left “90210” in 1994 amid rumors of an acrimonious fallout with government producer Spelling, however like lots of the different assertions concerning the star, Spelling insisted they weren’t true and employed her to star as a benevolent witch within the CW supernatural sequence “Charmed” 4 years later.
“I inform ya the reality, all these tales about Shannen have been so overblown,” Spelling informed The Instances in 1998. “Was she late on the set a few occasions? Positive, however who isn’t? Shannen was not fired from ‘90210.’ She had acquired some TV film presents, and we sat down and talked about it, and she or he made the choice. If I had an issue together with her, why would I rent her for ‘Charmed’?”
Alyssa Milano, Holly Marie Combs, Shannen Doherty from the TV present “Charmed” in 1999.
(Getty Photos / Getty Photos)
Doherty performed Prue Halliwell from 1998 to 2001, with Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs co-starring on the sister-witches present that bumped into 2006. Doherty’s character was killed off on the finish of Season 3, once more amid rumors of dangerous blood on the set.
“There was an excessive amount of drama on the set and never sufficient ardour for the work,” she informed “Leisure Tonight” after leaving the present.
Doherty appeared on the quilt of Playboy journal’s March 1994 situation and, once more, virtually a decade later in December 2003. By then she described her life as way more subdued. She grew to become an avid animal rights activist and a valued supporter of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. She relished being a homebody, had a penchant for inside design and hung out horseback driving. She additionally continued to star in varied tv and movie initiatives.
“I want I had carried out myself higher from time to time and been extra personal, however I’d somewhat dwell my life to the fullest than continuously conduct myself in a sure method to achieve approval from others,” she informed Playboy in 2003. “I’ve all the time been outspoken about my opinions, and there’s one thing to be mentioned for having the braveness to simply dwell your life. I’ve regrets however no apologies.”
The “Charmed” star went on to marry skilled poker participant Rick Salomon in 2002, however the marriage was annulled 9 months later. On Oct. 15, 2011, she married movie star photographer Kurt Iswarienko in a lavish Malibu ceremony. After 11 years of marriage, and several other years into her most cancers battles, they introduced their divorce in 2023.
5 years after she was first identified with breast most cancers, Doherty mirrored on her ongoing battle and power of spirit.
“I attempt to treasure all of the small moments that most individuals don’t actually see or take as a right,” Doherty mentioned within the October 2020 situation of Elle. “The small issues are magnified for me. Now we have this infinite properly inside us, and it’s nearly persevering with to dig in that properly for the power to face adversity — and in order that we are able to additionally see all the wonder.”
Doherty is survived by her mom, Rosa Doherty, and older brother, Sean Doherty.
