Shannen Doherty, a raven-haired actress best known for portraying an impulsive teenager on the TV drama “Beverly Hills, 90210” and a flirty witch in the popular fantasy series “Charmed,” died July 13 in Malibu, Calif. She was 53.
The cause was cancer, said her publicist, Leslie Sloane. No other details were immediately available.
Ms. Doherty announced in 2015 that she was being treated for breast cancer, which went into remission before returning around 2019, when she began work on a six-episode “90210” reunion. She said in June 2023 that the cancer had spread to her brain, and announced in November that it had spread to her bones.
“I’m not done with living,” she told People magazine that month, as she prepared to launch a new podcast discussing her life and career. “I’m not done with loving. I’m not done with creating. I’m not done with hopefully changing things for the better.”
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An actress since childhood, Ms. Doherty initially specialized in wholesome fare before developing a fast-crowd TV persona that melded into her private life. Arrested and accused of drunken driving and battery, she acquired a reputation in the tabloids and entertainment press as a hard-partying Hollywood “bad girl,” with colleagues complaining of divalike behavior that culminated in acrimonious departures from her two best-known shows.
In childhood, she was the voice of a precocious, anthropomorphic mouse in the animated film “The Secret of NIMH” (1982) and played the ponytailed Jenny Wilder in the final season of NBC’s pioneer drama “Little House on the Prairie,” as well as in three subsequent made-for-TV movies based on the homespun series.
Her “Prairie” work led to a starring role alongside Wilford Brimley in the NBC family drama “Our House,” in which she played a spirited teenager who dreams of following her late father into the Air Force. The show ended after two seasons, and Ms. Doherty soon gained wider prominence with a supporting part in the 1988 dark comedy “Heathers,” which marked a striking change of character.
Ms. Doherty played the conniving Heather Duke, one of several girls in a popular high school clique known as “the Heathers” who are tormented by a sociopath and his belatedly conscience-stricken accomplice, played by Christian Slater and Winona Ryder. (Ms. Doherty later appeared in a 2018 television reboot, “Heathers,” for the Paramount Network.)
The film was not a commercial success, but it received strong reviews and caught the eye of television producer Aaron Spelling, who was moving on from the ABC hit “Dynasty” with a new series about teenage angst at the fictional West Beverly Hills High. Ms. Doherty, Spelling later said, was “the best young actress I’ve seen in a long time.”
“Beverly Hills, 90210,” which used one of the city’s Zip codes in its title, featured Ms. Doherty as Brenda Walsh, a reserved Minnesota transplant and naive 16-year-old newcomer to ritzy Beverly Hills. (Ms. Doherty was 19 when the show premiered on Fox in 1990.)
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She was joined on-screen by Jason Priestley, who played her twin brother; Luke Perry, an on-and-off love interest; Jennie Garth and Ian Ziering, who played spoiled classmates; and Tori Spelling, the producer’s daughter, as a levelheaded friend.
As “90210” acquired a mass audience, Ms. Doherty’s public image started to unravel. Stories proliferated about her partying, her abrasive treatment of colleagues, her late arrivals at work and extravagant shopping sprees. Her wages were garnished to repay nearly $32,000 in bad checks.
Ms. Doherty’s tumultuous romantic life also became a tabloid fixture. There were multiple engagements; allegations from one fiancé, cosmetics heir Dean Factor, that she had threatened him with a gun and tried to run him over with a car (“If I really wanted to run him over, I wouldn’t have missed,” she later said); and a spur-of-the-moment wedding to Ashley Hamilton, the son of actor George Hamilton. The marriage lasted about six months.
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To many of the series’ admirers, Ms. Doherty’s actions were a betrayal of the initially moralistic character she played on television. When Brenda seemed to undergo a transformation during the show’s second season, becoming increasingly bad-tempered, fans revolted, forming an anti-Doherty fan club that received national press coverage for its “Hating Brenda” novelty record and “I Hate Brenda” bumper stickers.
Ms. Doherty left the show in 1994 in what she called a “mutual decision” with producer Spelling. To explain her central character’s departure, the script had her decamping to London to train as an actress. She later reprised the role in several episodes of “90210,” a reboot that aired on the CW Network from 2008 to 2013, and in “BH90210,” which ran on Fox in 2019 and featured many of her original co-stars.
Child actress
Shannen Maria Doherty was born in Memphis on April 12, 1971. Her father purchased a trucking company and moved the family to Los Angeles around the time she was 6. His business collapsed several years later, thrusting the family into financial straits just as Ms. Doherty began acting. Her mother worked as a beautician.
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As Ms. Doherty’s profile grew in the 1990s, she starred in TV movies and low-budget films and won a small part in “Mallrats” (1995), the slacker comedy by actor and director Kevin Smith. She also reteamed with Aaron Spelling for the WB drama “Charmed,” about a trio of sisters with magical powers. Praised by critics, it marked the network’s highest-rated debut when it premiered in 1998.
Ms. Doherty played the elder sister, the telekinetic witch Prue, for three seasons before leaving the show in 2001, killed off and replaced by Rose McGowan in the role of a newly revealed half sister. As with the original “90210,” Ms. Doherty’s departure followed clashes with Spelling and with her co-stars, Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano.
She appeared in another supernatural role, as a witch investigating her sister’s death, in the Spelling-produced made-for-TV movie “Satan’s School for Girls” (2000), and later hosted one season of the Syfy Channel prank show “Scare Tactics.”
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A brief 2002 marriage to poker player Rick Salomon ended in divorce the next year. She later hosted an Oxygen channel reality show, “Breaking Up With Shannen Doherty” (2006), in which she helped people resolve toxic relationships.
Ms. Doherty married Kurt Iswarienko in 2011. She filed for divorce last year.
Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
In 2010, Ms. Doherty published a memoir and self-help book, “Badass: A Hard-Earned Guide to Living Life With Style and (the Right) Attitude.” Some of her final big-screen roles included appearances in the boxing film “Back in the Day” (2016) and the James Franco-directed biopic “Bukowski” (2013), as the mother of the titular poet.
“I can’t fight what people think about me,” she told the New York Post while promoting her reality series. “I tried it with everybody out there. I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I’ve tried desperately for a second chance with the media, and it has not been given to me. At this point, I sort of have to walk away and do what makes me happy.”
