Shannen Doherty, ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ bad girl who battled cancer for years, dies at 53
Shannen Doherty, the quintessential ’90s rebel who starred in the TV mega-hits “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Charmed,” has died after a nearly decadelong battle with cancer. She was 53.
Doherty died Saturday, her publicist Leslie Sloane confirmed in a statement to The Times. Last June, the actor revealed her cancer had spread to her brain and, in November, to her bones.
“It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty,” Sloane said.
“On Saturday, July 13, she lost her battle with cancer after many years of fighting the disease,” Sloane continued. “The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and friend was surrounded by her loved ones as well as her dog, Bowie. The family asks for their privacy at this time so they can grieve in peace.”
The “90210” star first went public with her breast cancer diagnosis in 2015, when she filed a lawsuit against her former management firm on claims of breach of contract and negligence. She stated that the firm had let her health insurance lapse in 2014 and that she couldn’t reenroll in insurance benefits until 2015.
Shannen Doherty, who died Saturday, was as complex as the “Beverly Hills, 90210” character that she was best known for, loved and hated, and simultaneously revolutionary.
By March 2015, doctors discovered “invasive breast cancer metastatic to at least one lymph node,” which she said had the chance to spread while she was unable to visit a doctor due to the insurance lapse.
In 2017, the actor shared in an emotional Instagram post that the disease had gone into remission. “As every single one of my fellow cancer family knows, the next five years is crucial. Reoccurrences happen all the time. ... So with a heart that is certainly lighter, I wait.”
Four years after Doherty’s initial diagnosis, while shooting Fox’s revival of “Beverly Hills, 90210,” she was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer but kept it quiet for nearly a year.
“My cancer came back,” Doherty revealed on “Good Morning America” in February 2020. “It’s a bitter pill to swallow in a lot of ways. There are days where I say, why me? And then I go, well, why not me? Who else besides me deserves this? None of us do.”
In June 2023, the actor shared an intimate look at the reality of cancer in a video taken at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. A crying Doherty wore a radiotherapy mask as she underwent her first radiation treatment, revealing that the cancer had spread to her brain.
“My fear is obvious. I am extremely claustrophobic and there was a lot going on in my life,” she captioned the video. “This is what cancer can look like.”
By November 2023, Doherty revealed that the cancer had spread to her bones. “I don’t want to die,” she told People four days before Thanksgiving. “I’m not done with living. I’m not done with loving. I’m not done with creating. I’m not done with hopefully changing things for the better. I’m just not — I’m not done.”
Shannen Doherty said a CT scan earlier this year showed her breast cancer spread to her brain. ‘This is what cancer can look like,’ she wrote on Instagram.
Doherty was born into a Southern Baptist family in Memphis, Tenn., on April 12, 1971, the younger of Tom and Rosa Doherty’s two children. Her family moved to the affluent Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County when she was 6, but Doherty credited her early-onset self-assurance to gender disparities she witnessed in the South during the 1970s.
“I saw how women were treated,” she told People in 1992. “And I wasn’t going to be treated like that.”
With the family settled on the West Coast, Doherty performed in a church play at age 10 — and in an only-in-L.A. moment, a Hollywood agent attended that play (he was a friend of the director). He saw potential in the young Doherty. Within weeks, she made her commercial debut for a telephone company.
“My parents weren’t very enthusiastic about me going into show business, but I was,” Doherty told the Orange County Register in 1995.
She landed her first major role at 11, when Michael Landon hired her to play the courageous and spirited Jenny Wilder on “Little House on the Prairie.” “That show changed my life,” Doherty told the outlet, adding that Landon advised her at the time never to let anyone walk all over her, and to be a strong woman.
As she entered her teen years, Doherty’s raven locks and casual moxie made her an easy choice for “bad girl”-type roles, such as Heather Duke — her first major film role, in the 1988 dark comedy “Heathers.” But it was her portrayal of the fiercely driven 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 at the teen demographic was relatively wholesome and uncontroversial, the Fox series about privileged young people living in one of the country’s most expensive ZIP Codes was laying the foundation for the teen drama genre as we now know it, with its then-revolutionary exploration of the social and sexual drama of high school life. It would go on to air for 10 seasons and spawn the successful spinoff “Melrose Place,” the CW reboot “90210” and, later, a 2019 meta revival, “BH90210,” featuring most of the cast playing heightened versions of their real-life personas as they work to get a reboot of the prime-time soap off the ground.
But it’s hard to overstate the very ’90s fan mania that surrounded the series in its early years, and how it shaped the way Doherty navigated her considerable fame. The angsty teen drama starred Doherty alongside Tori Spelling, Jason Priestley, Luke Perry, Brian Austin Green, Jennie Garth, Gabrielle Carteris and Ian Ziering. The cast of worship-ready teen idols and Doherty, in particular, were plum targets for tabloid fodder.
“The teen heartthrobs of Fox’s ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ ... garnered the biggest cheers and screams from the teen fans who lined the streets,” The Times said in a 1991 Emmys red carpet story. “Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty ... arrived together hand in hand and were attacked en masse by the photographers, as was their costar Luke Perry.”
But while her TV character was dealing with issues like having sex for the first time and failing driver’s ed, Doherty was earning an off-camera reputation as a reckless party girl, spending late hours with co-star Tori Spelling at clubs including Hollywood’s since-closed Roxbury. She butted heads on the set with co-star Jennie Garth, who later in life would remain her friend.
“Out of control!” screamed the headline on the cover of People magazine in June 1993, teasing to a Doherty story inside.
“Since debuting on ‘90210’ in 1990, Doherty has left a trail of bad debts, trashed homes, exhausted friendships and wasted relationships,” the story said. “When challenged, say several people who know her, she is likely to respond with a menacing, ‘You don’t know who you’re f—ing with!’ ”
In her early 20s and at the height of newfound fame, Doherty’s romantic flings and flops played out in the tabloids too. In early 1993, she was briefly engaged to cosmetics heir Dean Jay Factor before a messy publicized split months later. In October of the same year, she tied the knot with Ashley Hamilton, the son of actor George Hamilton, after knowing him for a few weeks. They divorced six months later.
But the people who worked closely with the “90210” star dismissed the noise and sang the actor’s praises. Priestley, who played Doherty’s twin brother, Brandon, told People in 1992 that all the stories about his castmate were grossly exaggerated. “She’s a very intelligent young woman who isn’t afraid to speak her mind,” he said.
When the movie “Heathers” was shown at the 1989 U.S.
Aaron Spelling described her to the outlet as “the best young actress I’ve seen in a long time,” adding that she was an honest person who wore her emotions on her sleeve. “If you ask her a direct question, she’ll give you a direct answer.”
And her co-star Tori Spelling, who portrayed Donna Martin on the soap, echoed her father’s sentiments but noted that Doherty’s reputation “hurts her feelings a bit.”
Doherty left “90210” in 1994 amid rumors of an acrimonious fallout with executive producer Spelling, but like many of the other assertions about the star, Spelling insisted they weren’t true and hired her to star as a benevolent witch in the CW supernatural series “Charmed” four years later.
“I tell ya the truth, all those stories about Shannen were so overblown,” Spelling told The Times in 1998. “Was she late on the set a couple of times? Sure, but who isn’t? Shannen was not fired from ‘90210.’ She had received some TV movie offers, and we sat down and talked about it, and she made the decision. If I had a problem with her, why would I hire her for ‘Charmed’?”
Doherty played Prue Halliwell from 1998 to 2001, with Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs co-starring on the sister-witches show that ran into 2006. Doherty’s character was killed off at the end of Season 3, again amid rumors of bad blood on the set.
“There was too much drama on the set and not enough passion for the work,” she told “Entertainment Tonight” after leaving the show.
Doherty appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine’s March 1994 issue and, again, almost a decade later in December 2003. By then she described her life as much more subdued. She became an avid animal rights activist and a valued supporter of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. She relished being a homebody, had a penchant for interior design and spent time horseback riding. She also continued to star in various television and film projects.
In order for a fallen celebrity to successfully mount a comeback in Hollywood, a public mea culpa is usually necessary: Apologize for your past transgressions and the world will beat a path to your door.
“I wish I had conducted myself better on occasion and been more private, but I would rather live my life to the fullest than constantly conduct myself in a certain way to gain approval from others,” she told Playboy in 2003. “I’ve always been outspoken about my opinions, and there’s something to be said for having the courage to just live your life. I have regrets but no apologies.”
The “Charmed” star went on to marry professional poker player Rick Salomon in 2002, but the marriage was annulled nine months later. On Oct. 15, 2011, she married celebrity photographer Kurt Iswarienko in a lavish Malibu ceremony. After 11 years of marriage, and several years into her cancer battles, they announced their divorce in 2023.
‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ star Shannen Doherty filed for divorce Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, ending her 11-year union with third husband Kurt Iswarienko.
Five years after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer, Doherty reflected on her battle and strength of spirit.
“I try to treasure all the small moments that most people don’t really see or take for granted,” Doherty said in the October 2020 issue of Elle. “The small things are magnified for me. We have this endless well within us, and it’s just about continuing to dig in that well for the strength to face adversity — and so that we can also see all the beauty.”
Doherty is survived by her mother, Rosa Doherty, and brother, Sean Doherty.
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