Remembering Shannen Doherty, the Beverly Hills 'badass'

Doherty starred in the TV series Charmed. Photo: Photo12 via AFP

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

"It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty," her publicist, Leslie Sloane said.

Doherty enjoyed a screen career spanning four decades as the star of hit TV shows like Beverly Hills 90210 and Charmed.

Although Doherty and the characters she played usually seemed to inhabit a glossier, more beautiful world, she was always someone viewers could relate to on screen, and was a self-proclaimed "badass" in real life.

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

Her first major film role came in 1985 with 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 the high school clique in cult 1988 teen drama Heathers, starring alongside Winona Ryder, Lisanne Falk and Kim Walker.

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

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

Photo: Photo12 via AFP

The TV series followed a group of teenagers as they dealt with relationship and family issues that were relatable beyond the glamorous Beverly Hills setting.

While working on the show in the 1990s, she developed a reputation as something of a troublemaker, with reports accusing her of heated feuds with her fellow actors.

"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 admitted she struggled to handle the fame. "I was very confused back then about what I wanted for myself, and the attention was way too much," she said. "I didn't always handle it that well.

"And in truth, I was just shooting myself in the foot because the more I fought it, the more the celebrity took over versus the actor, and then the press ran with it."

She told another interviewer: "Maybe my career would have taken a different direction if I'd been wiser and older, but I wasn't. I started young and I got 90210 kind of success very early, and it came at a time in my life where I was a petrified kid."

Doherty left 90210 after four seasons, with Brenda being written out to go to prestigious drama school RADA in London.

While the actress mellowed and became more private as she got older, she played up to her reputation with the release of 2010's Badass, 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, which followed a trio of sisters who are the most powerful good witches of all time, and North Shore, set in a Hawaii hotel. In 1995, she starred in the offbeat comedy Mallrats.

Away from the screen, Doherty had a somewhat turbulent romantic life. She married Ashley Hamilton, the son of actor George Hamilton, two weeks after meeting him in 1993, but they divorced just six months later.

She wed 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 stayed together until her death.

Photo: AFP / MICHAEL TRAN

As she got older, Doherty became a passionate animal rights activist and participated in campaigns against animal cruelty.

She also ventured into reality TV as the genre became popular in the Noughties, and in 2010 she appeared in Dancing With The Stars, the US version of the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing.

Beverly Hills, 90210 remained the role she was best known for, and in 2008 she joined the cast of a new version of the show, reprising her role of Brenda Walsh. In the reboot, Brenda had grown up to become a successful theatre actress and stage director.

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

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

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 to honour her former co-star Luke Perry, who died of a stroke aged 52.

"It's so weird for me to be diagnosed and then somebody who was seemingly healthy to go first," said Doherty. "It was really shocking. And the least I could do to honour him was to do that show."

The latest version, titled BH90210, put a new spin on it. Rather than being a straightforward reboot, it followed Doherty and many of the other original cast members playing heightened, parody versions of their real selves.

Doherty kept the return of the disease secret at first, opting not to tell her fellow cast members except Brian Austin Green.

"I had moments of great anxiety where I thought, 'I can't really do this,'" she explained.

"Prior to shooting, Brian would always call me and say, 'Listen, you know, whatever happens, I have your back.' So Brian helped me through a lot."

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

Photo: VALERIE MACON

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

Speaking to People magazine, Doherty said she was determined to keep going with treatment, adding: "I'm not done with living. I'm not done with loving. I'm not done with creating."

- This story was first published by theBBC.