LOS ANGELES (AP) Shannen Doherty, the Beverly Hills, 90210 star whose life and career were devastated by illness and tabloid stories, has died at age 53.
After years of battling breast cancer, Doherty died Saturday, according to a statement from her publicist, Leslie Sloane.
The daughter, sister, aunt and devoted friend were surrounded by loved ones and their dog, Bowie. The family asks for their privacy at this time so they can grieve in peace, Sloane said Sunday. The news was first reported by People magazine.
His illness was publicly revealed in a lawsuit filed in 2015 against its former business leaders, She claimed her money had been mismanaged and her health insurance had lapsed. She later shared intimate details of her treatment after a single mastectomy. In December 2016, she posted a photo of her first day of radiation therapy, calling the treatment “scary” for her.
In February 2020, Doherty revealed that the cancer had returned and she was at stage four. She said she came forward because her health condition could be revealed in court. The actress had sued insurance giant State Farm after her California home was damaged in a fire in 2018.
“I have no idea how long my chemotherapy is going to last… It’s not something I can predict, it’s not something my doctors can predict. And it’s scary, it’s like a big wake-up call,” Doherty said on a late June episode of her podcast Let’s Be Clear, adding that a recent change in the shape of her cancer cells meant there were new treatment protocols to try. For the first time in probably a few months, I feel hopeful because there are a lot more protocols now, whereas before I was hopeful but I was still preparing.
Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Doherty moved to Los Angeles with her family at age 7 and within a few years became an actress.
“It's completely my decision,” she told The Associated Press in a 1994 interview. “My parents never pushed me to do anything. They supported me. It wouldn't really matter if I was a professional soccer player, they would still be just as supportive and loving.”
As a child star, she appeared regularly on television series such as Little House on the Prairie, in which she played Jenny Wilder. She made a detour to the big screen as a teenager in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985). and the heathers.
In 1990, the doe-eyed, dark-haired actress landed her role as Brenda Walsh in producer Aaron Spellings' hit teen melodrama set in upscale Beverly Hills. She and Brenda's twin brother Brandon are Midwestern fish out of water.
But Doherty's fame came with media attention and accounts of temper tantrums, alcoholism and impulsivity, the latter particularly notable after a very brief marriage to actor George Hamilton's son Ashley. Doherty remarried in 2002 to Rick Salomon and had it annulled a year later. In 2011, Doherty married photographer Kurt Iswarienko. She filed for divorce for divorce in April 2023.
She left Beverly Hills, 90210 at the end of its fourth season in 1994 (the series aired until 2000), reportedly fired by Spelling due to conflicts with her co-stars and chronic lateness.
But in his 1994 interview with AP, Doherty described his life as peaceful.
“That must be the case, if you pick up the Enquirer and find out the only thing they can write about me is that I set up a pay phone next door and was seen at Strouds (a discount bedding and bath chain) buying $1,400 worth of bed sheets and didn't want to go to an expensive store,” she said. “He must be calm if they get that stuff out of their heads.”
Three years later, in 1997, Doherty was ordered to undergo anger management therapy by a Beverly Hills Municipal Court judge after she allegedly smashed a beer bottle on a man's windshield during an argument. After a drunken driving arrest in 2001, she pleaded not guilty and was sentenced to serve five days in a work release program.
Doherty reunited with Spelling when he cast her as Prue Halliwell on Charmed in 1998. In an interview with AP that year, the actress expressed regret about her past.
“I was largely responsible for all of this,” Doherty said. “I don’t think I can point the finger at anyone and say, ‘Oh, you’re to blame.’ And I don’t do it with myself either. Because I was growing up.”
His personality has been grotesquely misinterpreted by the media, Doherty added.
Spelling said at the time that their relationship was never as bad as some suggested.
“We had some bumps in the road, but boy, who hasn't?” said Spelling, who died in 2006. “Everything Shannen did was exaggerated by the rag sheets.”
Doherty starred with Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano on Charmed from 1998 to 2001, when his character was replaced by an actress played by Rose McGowan. Doherty appeared in the sequel series 90210 seven years later and competed on Dancing with the Stars in 2010. She also worked on the third reboot of Beverly Hills, 90210, BH90210, a meta-parody that reunited most of the original cast and aired for one season in 2019.
She also appeared in a tribute episode of Riverdale dedicated to the star of this series and his late on-screen love from Beverly Hills, 90210 Luke Perry.
Doherty struggled to regain her Beverly Hills, 90210 stardom, but she starred in big-screen films, including Mallrats and Jay and Bob Strike Back, as well as TV movies like A Burning Passion: The Margaret Mitchell Story, in which she played the author of Gone with the Wind. Blindfold: Acts of Obsession, an erotic thriller starring Judd Nelson, was a flop.
Doherty's lawsuit against her former managers was settled in 2016. She has spoken openly about the effects of cancer, posting photos showing the baldness that followed treatment, and in an interview with Entertainment Tonight in August 2016, she shared her fears.
The unknown is always the scariest part, she said. Is the chemotherapy going to work? Is the radiation going to work? she said. The pain is manageable, you know that living without a breast is manageable, it's the worry of your future and how it's going to affect the people you love.
Doherty has been an advocate for cancer awareness and care and spoke to the AP in 2021 about how years with the disease have affected her life and sense of optimism.
“When you have cancer, you don’t tolerate drama anymore. I don’t like people wasting my time. I don’t like negativity,” she said. “It’s weird because I think if you look back, you’re like, ‘Oh my God, there’s so much drama around her,’ but I don’t think I was necessarily in the drama. I just think if you took Shannon, 18, 19, and you took her and you put her in the place where she is now, I would be a nerd and no one would write about me.”
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Longtime television writer Lynn Elber retired from The Associated Press in 2022. AP journalists Alicia Rancilio and Mallika Sen contributed reporting.
