Beverly Hills, 90210 Actress Shannen Doherty Dead At 53

Shannen Doherty, the television actor who rose to fame in the '90s with "Beverly Hills, 90210," has died of cancer at age 53 (via Variety). Doherty had initially been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, and after treatment went into remission two years later, according to People. Then in 2023, she revealed on Instagram that her cancer had returned and had spread to her brain. 

Her publicist Leslie Sloane provided the following statement: "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." 

On the December 6, 2023 episode of her podcast "Let's Be Clear with Shannen Doherty," she said that with stage 4 cancer, which is terminal, "You're chasing protocols and you're chasing clinical trials" but that "you don't want it to be all-consuming because you still want to live your life. I want to enjoy the time that I have." While best known for the Fox TV teen drama "Beverly Hills, 90210," she also starred in the supernatural drama "Charmed," played supporting roles in cult classic movies "Mallrats" and "Heathers," and appeared in dozens of other films and television episodes. 

Shannen Doherty's television career took off at age 11 with her role on the final season of "Little House on the Prairie" before she appeared on the smash hit "Beverly Hills, 90210" as Brenda Walsh at age 19. She left the show in 1994 due to various on-set tensions. Doherty admitted she was unhappy during this period. "It's just that the sacrifice at the time seemed too large to me," she told Entertainment Weekly. "The sacrifice of a camera pointed in my face 24 hours a day while I was desperately trying to grow up, to figure out my spirituality, to figure out my boyfriends. I mean, I was a teenager."

Doherty said that some of the problems she experienced in Hollywood at the time were due to her standing up for herself as a woman. "I didn't placate the men in my business," she recalled on her podcast. "And I certainly didn't placate my bosses. I fought them." Following her role on "Charmed," she had a short-lived reality TV show in 2006 for the Oxygen network called "Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty," and she appeared on "Dancing with the Stars" in 2010.

After Shannen Doherty's 2015 breast cancer diagnosis, she had a single mastectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation, according to People. Doherty said that the treatment stretched from 2016 into the following year when she went into remission. "It was hard and it was scary, but there was also something so beautiful about it," she recalled on her podcast. "I really learned a lot about myself ... I learned about my own well of strength and being able to dig deep ... At that point in time, I thought I wouldn't survive it."

She said she felt "a deep responsibility to share her cancer story" to "help others going through what I was going through" and to "possibly speed up cancer research, get more money behind it." When in 2019 the breast cancer returned and metastasized in her bones, she redoubled her efforts. "What better thing to use my platform for than to help other people with cancer," she said in her podcast. "To bring more awareness to cancer in hopes of finding a cure. Maybe everything else in my life ... my career, and all of that was really just to get me to this place. Just to get me to the place where I can actually make a difference for others and for myself."