In 2015, Doherty announced 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 living,” she told People magazine that month, as she prepared to launch a new podcast about her life and career. “I’m not done loving. I’m not done creating. I’m not done hoping to change things for the better.”
An actress since childhood, Doherty initially specialized in wholesome television shows before developing a TV persona that blended into her private life. Arrested and charged with drunken driving and assault, she earned a reputation in the tabloids and entertainment press as a party-loving Hollywood “bad girl,” with colleagues complaining about her diva-like behavior, leading to acrimonious departures from her two best-known shows.
As a child, she voiced 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 pioneering drama series “Little House on the Prairie,” as well as three subsequent television movies based on the house series.
Her work on Prairie landed her a starring role opposite Wilford Brimley on 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 series ended after two seasons, and Doherty quickly gained wider fame with a supporting role in the 1988 dark comedy Heathers, which marked a striking character change.
Ms. Doherty played Heather Duke, one of many girls in a gang of high school girls known as “the Heathers,” tormented by a sociopath and his 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 good reviews and caught the attention of television producer Aaron Spelling, who was focusing on following ABC’s hit series “Dynasty,” for a new series about teenage angst at the fictional West Beverly Hills High School. Miss Doherty, Spelling later said, was “the best young actress I’ve seen in a long time.”
“Beverly Hills, 90210,” whose title used one of the city’s ZIP codes, starred Ms. Doherty as Brenda Walsh, a shy, naive 16-year-old Minnesota girl new to upscale Beverly Hills. (Ms. Doherty was 19 when the series first aired on Fox in 1990.)
She was joined onscreen 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 no-nonsense friend.
As “90210” grew in popularity, Ms. Doherty’s public image began to deteriorate. Stories abounded about her partying, aggressive treatment of co-workers, late arrivals to work and extravagant shopping sprees. Her wages were garnished to pay off nearly $32,000 in bad checks.
Ms. Doherty’s tumultuous love life also became a regular tabloid fixture. She was engaged on numerous occasions, with one fiancé, cosmetics heir Dean Factor, accusing her of threatening him with a gun and trying to run him over with a car (“If I really wanted to run him over, I wouldn’t have missed,” she later said), and she married Ashley Hamilton, the son of actor George Hamilton, on a whim. The marriage lasted about six months.
For many fans of the show, Doherty’s actions were a betrayal of the initially moralistic character she portrayed on television. When Brenda appeared to undergo a transformation during the show’s second season, becoming increasingly angry, fans revolted and formed an anti-Doherty fan club that received national media coverage for its “Hating Brenda” vinyl record and “I Hate Brenda” bumper stickers.
Doherty left the show in 1994, in what she said was a “mutual decision” with producer Spelling. The script had her leaving in London to train as an actress. She later reprised the role in several episodes of “90210,” a reboot that aired on the CW from 2008 to 2013, and in “BH90210,” which aired 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 bought a trucking company and moved the family to Los Angeles when she was 6 years old. His business failed several years later, plunging the family into financial difficulty just as Ms. Doherty was beginning to pursue acting. Her mother worked as a beautician.
During the 1990s, Doherty’s fame grew, as she starred in TV movies and low-budget films, landing a small role in actor-director Kevin Smith’s comedy “Mallrats” (1995). She also teamed with Aaron Spelling for the WB drama “Charmed,” about a trio of sisters with magical powers. The critically acclaimed show was the network’s first ratings-high when it premiered in 1998.
Ms. Doherty played the older sister, the telekinetic witch Prue, for three seasons before leaving the show in 2001, killed off and replaced by Rose McGowan as a newly revealed half-sister. As in the first episode of “90210,” Ms. Doherty’s departure followed conflicts 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 television film “Satan’s School for Girls” (2000), and later hosted a season of the Syfy Channel prank show “Scare Tactics.”
After a brief marriage in 2002 to poker player Rick Salomon, she divorced the following year. She then hosted a reality television show on the Oxygen channel, “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.
Full details of survivors were not immediately available.
In 2010, Doherty published a memoir and self-help book, “Badass: A Hard-Earned Guide to Living Life With Style and (the Right) Attitude.” Her recent film roles include appearances in the boxing film “Back in the Day” (2016) and the James Franco biopic “Bukowski” (2013), in which she played the mother of the eponymous poet.
“I can’t fight what people think of me,” she told the New York Post while promoting her reality show. “I’ve tried with everybody. I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I’ve desperately tried to get a second chance with the media, but it hasn’t been given to me. At this point, I have to kind of step away and do what makes me happy.”