Shannen Doherty dead at 53 after years-long cancer battle

Actress Shannen Doherty has died aged 53 after a long battle with cancer.

The Charmed and Beverly Hills 90210 star’s longtime publicist Leslie Sloane confirmed the sad news in a statement to People magazine on Sunday.

“It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty. On Saturday, July 13, she lost her battle with cancer after many years of fighting the disease,” Sloane said.

“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.”

Doherty had battled cancer for more than nine years. She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, undergoing a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation treatment before declaring herself in remission in 2017.

But the cancer returned in 2020, with Doherty revealing it had metastasised, spreading into her spine, and later into her brain.

In November 2023, she said the disease had spread to her bones, adding that she didn’t want to die because she had a lot more living to do.

“I’m not done with living. I’m not done with loving. I’m not done with creating,” the 1990s icon said. “I’m not done with hopefully changing things for the better.

“I’m just not. I’m not done.”

Doherty chronicled the progression of her illness on social media, sharing with her many followers the sometimes brutal reality of living with cancer.

She showed the good days and the bad days, the raw and unglamorous effects of treatment, and her lust for life despite some of the more debilitating effects of the disease.

“I’m not afraid of death, because I know where I’m going, I know the people I’m going to see,” she told People in November 2023.

“I think I would be afraid of death if I wasn’t a good person, but I am.

“I don’t want to die - that’s the difference.”

Early life and 90s stardom

Doherty was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in her mother’s Southern Baptist faith.

She began her acting career early, winning the role of Jenny Wilder on TV show Little House of the Prairie in 1982 when she was 11 years old.

Her next major TV role was the family drama Our House, playing Kris Witherspoon from 1986 to 1988.

Next up came her breakthrough film role, the black comedy Heathers (1988), where she starred alongside fellows 90s stars Winona Ryder and Christian Slater.

That role secured her casting in a new Aaron Spelling show called Beverly Hills 90210 in 1990, which would go on to become a worldwide smash.

Her performance as Brenda Walsh earned her a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Young Actress Starring in a Television Series in 1991 and 1992.

After leaving the show in 1994, Doherty struggled to find her footing, appearing in number of made-for-TV movies and, notoriously, a nude shoot for Playboy.

In 1998, Spelling cast her in what was to be her second hit show, Charmed, about the three Halliwell sisters, who also happened to be witches.

Despite the show’s popularity, Doherty left after three seasons, reportedly due to on-set tensions with co-star Alyssa Milano.

Her character Prue was killed off and replaced with her long-lost half-sister Paige Matthews, played by Rose McGowan.

‘Bad girl’ reputation

During the height of her fame in the 1990s, Doherty had something of a “bad girl” reputation.

There were reports of major on-set tensions with Beverly Hills 90210 co-star Jennie Garth, along with constant partying, chronic tardiness on set and even physical altercations with other co-stars.

None of Doherty’s projects in the 2000s were quite as high profile as her roles on Charmed and Beverly Hills 90210, but she continued to work.

Credits included the short-lived soapie North Shore and indie film Burning Palms, but Doherty also appeared on reality TV shows such as Dancing with the Stars, a road trip series with former Charmed co-star Holly Marie Combs, a TV version of Heathers and a Beverly Hills sequel called BH90210.

She was married three times, firstly to Ashley Hamilton, the son of actor George Hamilton, but the union lasted only a year, from 1993 to 1994.

In 2002, Doherty married professional poker player Rick Salomon, but that marriage ended even more quickly - it was all over in nine months.

Doherty’s third husband was photographer Kurt Iswarienko, whom she married in 2011.

The actress announced their split in April 2023, saying there was “no other option”.

TMZ reported that the marriage breakdown was “very acrimonious” and there was no pre-nuptial agreement between the pair.

Health crisis

After revealing in 1999 that she had Crohn’s disease, Doherty was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015.

In June 2023, she revealed that the cancer had spread to her brain and was terminal.

In a gut-wrenching interview with People in 2021, Doherty said cancer was “a part of life at this point”.

She added that she felt a duty to raise awareness of what it was like living with the disease.

“I feel like I have a responsibility in my more public life … to talk about cancer and perhaps educate people more and let people know that people with stage four are very much alive and very active,” she said at the time.

In October 2021, she uploaded photographs showing the effects of chemotherapy treatment, including her hair loss.

“For breast cancer awareness month, I’d like to share more of my own personal journey from my first diagnosis to my second,” she wrote.

“Is it all pretty?

“NO, but it’s truthful and my hope in sharing is that we all become more educated, more familiar with what cancer looks like.”

On what her biggest wish was, she said: “I’m very much like, there’s no bucket list because I’m going to be the longest-living person with cancer.”

“If I had to say one, it would just be living,” she added. “That’s the only thing on my list at this point.”