Remembering the “cool” guy of Beverly Hills

Fans are mourning the death of American actress Shannen Doherty, who has died at the age of 53 from cancer.

“It is with great sadness that I can confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty,” her spokesperson, Leslie Sloane, told PEOPLE magazine.

Doherty had an acting career spanning four decades as the star of hit television shows such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Charmed.

Although Doherty and the characters she plays often seem to live in a more glamorous and beautiful world, she’s always someone audiences can relate to on screen and considers herself a “cool guy” in real life.

The Memphis-born star began acting at a young age with appearances in television series such as Voyagers, Our House and Father Murphy, before joining the cast of the long-running series Little House on the Prairie as Jenny Wilder at the age of 11 in 1982.

Her first major film role came in 1985 in the film Girls Just Want to Have Fun, which also starred Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt.

Three years later, she played Heather Duke, a member of a group of high school friends in the 1988 hit teen drama Heathers, alongside Winona Ryder, Lisanne Falk and Kim Walker.

When the TV series was rebooted in 2016, Doherty played the mother of one of the new generation of Heathers.

In 1990, Doherty landed the biggest role of her career – playing Brenda Walsh in the original Beverly Hills, 90210.

This drama follows a group of teenagers as they face relationship and family issues against the glamorous backdrop of Beverly Hills.

While on the show in the 1990s, she developed a reputation as a troublemaker, with numerous reports alleging she had deep disagreements with fellow cast members.

“There were times when we wanted to claw each other’s eyes out,” Doherty’s co-star Jennie Garth admitted in 2014. But the pair became close friends as they grew older.

Doherty admits she struggled to cope with fame. “Back then I was very confused about what I wanted for myself, and the attention was overwhelming,” she says. “I didn’t always handle it well.

“And actually, I was just shooting myself in the foot because the more I resisted, the more celebrities overwhelmed actors, and then the press reported it.”

She told another interviewer: “Maybe my career could have gone in a different direction if I had been wiser and more mature, but I didn’t. I started young and had success like 90210 very early, and that came at a time in my life when I was a scared kid.”

Doherty left 90210 after four seasons, while Brenda was sent to study at the prestigious Rada drama school in London.

Although the actress became more quiet and reserved as she got older, she maintained her reputation with the release of Badass in 2010, a semi-autobiographical book that encouraged young women to find their “inner badass” and live life with attitude and confidence.

Doherty went on to star in shows including Charmed, about a trio of sisters who are the most powerful good witches of all time, and North Shore, set in a hotel in Hawaii. In 1995, she starred in the quirky comedy Mallrats.

Off-screen, Doherty had a rather turbulent love life. She married Ashley Hamilton, son of actor George Hamilton, two weeks after meeting him in 1993, but they divorced just six months later.

She married her second husband Rick Salomon in 2002, but the marriage was annulled after nine months. She married her third husband, a photographer named Kurt Iswarienko, in 2011. The couple remained together until her death.

As an adult, Doherty became an avid animal rights activist and participated in campaigns against animal cruelty.

She also tried her hand at reality television when the genre became popular in the 2000s, and in 2010 she appeared on Dancing With The Stars, the American version of BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing.

Beverly Hills, 90210 remains the role for which she is best known, and in 2008 she joined the cast of a new version of the show, reprising her role as Brenda Walsh. In the reboot, Brenda has grown up and become a successful stage actress and stage director.

But in his personal life, Doherty began to struggle with his health.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2015. The following year, she had a mastectomy and underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

She initially announced her cancer was in remission in 2017, but it returned two years later.

At the time, Doherty was appearing in another reboot of 90210, which she said she was keen to take part in as a tribute to her former co-star Luke Perry, who died of a stroke at the age of 52.

“It was strange to be diagnosed and then have someone who seemed healthy pass away first,” Doherty said. “It was really shocking. And the least I could do to honor him was to do that show.”

The latest version, titled BH90210, is a breath of fresh air. Rather than being a simple reboot, it sees Doherty and many of the original cast members playing exaggerated parodies of themselves.

At first, Doherty kept her relapse a secret, deciding not to tell her co-stars, except for Brian Austin Green.

“I had moments of extreme anxiety where I was like, ‘I can’t really do this,’” she explained. “Before we started filming, Brian would always call me and say, ‘Listen, you know, no matter what happens, I support you.’ So Brian helped me a lot.”

In recent years, she has openly documented her battle with cancer on social media – posting videos of herself exercising alongside the hashtag #cancerslayer.

In November 2023, she said she would be battling stage four breast cancer, which had now spread to her bones.

Speaking to People magazine, Doherty said she was determined to continue treatment, adding: “I haven’t stopped living. I haven’t stopped loving. I haven’t stopped creating.”