In November 2023, Shannen Doherty spoke to People about living with stage 4 breast cancer that had spread to her bones and brain, and about her determination to keep living, loving and creating.
Vibrant, not retired
People with cancer, Doherty says, are often assumed to be unable to walk, eat or work, “put out to pasture”. She wanted to show the opposite: people who are vibrant and grateful for every day. In January 2023, she learned the cancer had spread to her brain. She had radiation, then surgery to remove a tumour, followed by more radiation. For three or four months, she struggled to use her right hand, partly because of reactions to steroids. She would remain on treatment for life, she explained, while hoping that new clinical trials would open up in the coming years.
Her mother’s example
When Doherty was eight, her mother survived a brain aneurysm and woke with a paralysed eyebrow. Shannen watched her work every day until she could move it again. “You don’t give up,” her mother taught her. Illness, she says, has also taught her about people: some are wonderful at first, then hit a wall; others become warriors alongside you.
Friendship and new beginnings
Learning that her cancer was stage four in 2019 came shortly before the death of Luke Perry, with whom she had been planning a project, which led her to join the Beverly Hills, 90210 reboot. She speaks warmly of her friendship with Brian Austin Green, and said she was open to love again. With her platform, she felt a responsibility to raise awareness and funds for research. “I’m not afraid of dying,” she said. “I just don’t want to die.” And: “My greatest memory is yet to come.”
Shannen Doherty died on 13 July 2024.