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Shannen Maria Doherty was born April 12, 1971,
in Memphis, Tennessee. The daughter of Tom, a bank employee, and Rosa,
the owner of a beauty parlor, went from Memphis Belle, to Hollywood
bitch.
It turns out that Shannen has a lot to thank the late Michael Landon
for. After her family moved to Los Angeles when Shannen was 7, she
knew she wanted to pursue an acting career. Things moved quickly,
and she made her debut at age 10, with a role on the series Father
Murphy.
Michael Landon saw her on Father Murphy, and cast her as Jenny Wilder
on the final season of Little House on the Prairie (she appeared on
several made-for-TV Little House movies in the years that followed.
Shannen was still doing the TV rounds with appearances on '80s shows
such as Cagney & Lacey and Magnum P.I., and rejoined Michael Landon
on an episode of Highway to Heaven.
By the time she was cast in the 1986 series Our House, Shannen had
appeared on the big-screen in Night Shift and Girls Just Want To Have
Fun (with pre-pubescent Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt). Then
in 1989, a grown up Shannen co-starred with Winona Ryder in Heathers.
But it was in 1990 that Shannen's life would take a major turn, when
a little show called Beverly Hills, 90210 hit TV screens. The popular
teen drama invaded the houses of pimple-faced and angst-ridden teens
every week, and teenage girls everywhere related to Brenda Walsh,
Shannen Doherty's character.
After 4 years as the Minnesota-turned-Bev Hills twin, Shannen left
the show, allegedly because of constant tardiness and fights with
cast mates and producer Aaron Spelling.
A tabloid favorite, Shannen became the girl everyone loved to hate,
as her love life played like a Beverly Hills, 90210 episode and her
personal life a Jerry Springer episode. She was engaged and separated
to Dean Factor by 1991; engaged and separated to Chris Foufas by 1992;
and married Ashley Hamilton (son of the always tanned George Hamilton)
2 weeks after meeting him, and they divorced after less than a year.
Shannen had a brief courtship with actor Judd Nelson after they met
on the set of the 1994 film Blindfold, and in true Hollywood fashion,
started dating director Rob Weiss, broke up with him, got engaged,
and broke up with him again.
Shannen appeared partially nude in Playboy in 1993 and 1994; got
into an actual physical fight with a woman in a bar; and was arrested
on suspicion of drunk driving on December 28, 2000, to which she pleaded
innocent in March 2001.
While her personal life has been making tabloid headlines, her professional
career went more the way of a slew of Made-for-TV movies, including:
Forever Young, Obsessed, Freeze Frame, Jailbreakers, A Burning Passion:
The Margaret Mitchell Story, and Sleeping With the Devil. She also
starred in the cult-favorite Mallrats, and co-starred with Christina
Applegate in Nowhere.
Shannen's TV star potential proved that it was going anywhere but
nowhere, when she was cast in 1998 as Prue Halliwell in the WB's successful
Charmed (working with Aaron Spelling once again). As part of a sexy
sisterly trio of witches, along with Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie
Combs, Shannen proved that life after Beverly Hills, 90210 wasn't
all that bad. On May 14, 2001, Spelling Televison confirmed Shannen's
departure from the show, allegedly due to on-set cattiness between
her and Alyssa Milano. Shannen
Doherty Personal videos and photos - Click here!
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