By Harrison Smith
Hollywood is mourning the death of 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”.
She died on Saturday, July 13 in Malibu, California at 53 from cancer.
Doherty announced in 2015 that she was being treated for breast cancer, which went into remission before returning around 2019 when she began to 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.”
An actress since childhood, Doherty initially specialised 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 diva-like behaviour that culminated in acrimonious departures from her two best-known shows.
Born in Memphis on April 12, 1971, her profile grew in the 1990s as she starred in a spate of 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 television producer Aaron Spelling for the WB drama “Charmed,” about a trio of sisters with magical powers.
She also 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.”
During her 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 Doherty soon gained wider prominence with a supporting part in the 1988 dark comedy “Heathers”, alongside Christian Slater and Winona Ryder.
She 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 Spelling, who was moving on from the ABC hit “Dynasty” with a new series about teenage angst at the fictional West Beverly Hills High. 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 Doherty as Brenda Walsh, a reserved Minnesota transplant and naive 16-year-old newcomer to ritzy Beverly Hills.
She was joined on-screen by Jason Priestley, Luke Perry, Jennie Garth, Ian Ziering and Tori Spelling.
As “90210” acquired a mass audience, 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 (R578 000) in bad checks.
Her 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 and a spur-of-the-moment wedding to Ashley Hamilton, the son of actor George Hamilton.
The marriage lasted five months.
Doherty then left the show in 1994 in what she called a “mutual decision”. 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.
Meanwhile, in 2010, 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).
“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.”