Post by Phoenix on Sept 5, 2010 5:47:30 GMT -5
Shannen Maria Doherty (born April 12, 1971) is an American actress and television director, known for her work as Heather Duke in Heathers (1989), as Brenda Walsh in Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990–1994) and its spinoff series 90210, and as Prue Halliwell in Charmed (1998–2001).
Doherty was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the daughter of Rosa, a beauty parlor owner, and Tom Doherty, a mortgage consultant. She has an older brother (by four years) named Sean. Doherty has Irish ancestry with Catholic roots, though was raised in her mother's Southern Baptist religion. At the age of seven (in 1978) her family moved to Los Angeles, and she immediately announced that she wanted to be an actress. She speaks French and Spanish. Her high school GPA was 4.0.
Success began early, with guest spots on TV series including Voyagers!, Father Murphy, and Airwolf starting in 1981. When a casting notice was released in Hollywood for a regular role on the popular Little House on the Prairie, she jumped at the opportunity and eventually won the role of Jenny Wilder at the age of eleven, thanks in part to actor/producer Michael Landon seeing her guest spot on Father Murphy,[citation needed] which he also produced. Doherty stayed in the series until the show's cancellation in 1983.
In 1985, Doherty starred as Maggie Malene in teen-comedy movie Girls Just Want To Have Fun alongside actresses Helen Hunt and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Doherty was cast as the oldest Witherspoon sibling, Kris, on the family drama Our House, which ran from 1986 to 1988, a role which garnered her several Young Artist Award nominations. She then went on to appear in an episode of Magnum, P.I., followed by an episode of Airwolf. Doherty's first major motion picture role was in Heathers, released in 1989. In 2006, the film was ranked #5 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies
Doherty's breakout role was as Brenda Walsh in the Aaron Spelling-produced TV series Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1990. In 1991 and 1992 her portrayal of Brenda earned her a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Young Actress Starring in a Television Series. In 2004, E! placed the character at number ten on their list of the 50 Most Wicked Women of Prime Time. Doherty departed the show at the end of the fourth season in 1994. Her character was written off the show as moving to London to attend school at the Royal Academy for Dramatic Arts.
While the character's absence was originally described as only being for a year, she never actually returned to the original series despite being mentioned from time to time during the show's remaining seasons (although she would reprise the role of Brenda later in the The CW's updated version of the show in 2008). She was replaced with former Saved by the Bell star Tiffani Thiessen, who played Valerie Malone. Her career afterward was somewhat spotty, marked for the most part by made-for-TV movies, though she also had a lead role in Kevin Smith's 1995 film Mallrats.
In 1998, Spelling cast her in another TV series, Charmed, in which she played lead character Prue Halliwell, the oldest of three sisters who discover they are witches. Doherty also directed few episodes for the series during season 2 and 3. At the end of the third season, Doherty left the show in 2001, resulting in her character's death, and the introduction of Rose McGowan's character Paige Matthews. Reportedly, the reason for her departure was because of tensions between Doherty and co-star Alyssa Milano.Though she had left the show long before it ended, she continued to own five percent of the rights to the series.
Doherty was also twice nominated for the Saturn Award, Best Genre TV Actress for her performance in Charmed, in 1999 and 2000 respectively. In 2007, AOL named Prue Halliwell the 10th greatest witch in television history.