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. article continued below...

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 Play.boy 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.

• Couldn't reach an agreement with the producers of "Beverly Hills, 90210" (1990) regarding specifics of her participation in the series finale so using edits and digital effects they removed her entirely from the next to last episode retrospective. An hour long special which included virtually every other actor in show's history.
• (12 September 1997) Sentenced to anger-management counseling by the Beverly Hills Municipal Court for an incident that occurred in August 1996; she got into an argument with 22 year old Corey Hanker and smashed a beer bottle on his car window as he tried to drive away from her.
• Her father, Tom, works at a bank and her mother, Rosa, is the owner of a beauty parlour.
• Appeared several times partially nude in Playboy magazine, one image is Dec. 1993, others in safer sex spread in March 1994.
• Was removed from the teen soap "Beverly Hills, 90210" (1990) at end of 4th season (March 1994). According to producer Aaron Spelling because of constant conflicts with other cast members and repeatedly late appearances on the set.
• Infuriated William Friedkin when she failed to turn up for the first day of shooting Jailbreakers (1994) (TV) in Hollywood. Shannon, as it turned out, had just returned from Italy, where she'd raised hell by turning up late for an interview on a television talk-show. Friedkin's first reaction was to call auditions and look at 12 other actresses to take the 90210-brat's part. But then he decided to stick with Doherty.
• Family moved to Los Angeles was she was 7 years old.
• In 1992, Shannen was a guest on "The Dennis Miller Show" (1992). She appeared on the fourth show which meant that host, Miller, was still in the process of getting used to the talk-show format. Early in the interview she rudely asked Miller if he was nervous and went on to point out his eyebrow which was twitching nervously. This made headlines the next day and before long, Miller was routinely making an effort to lampoon her on his talk show.
• Reportedly dated Counting Crows frontman Adam F. Duritz
• Offered a role in Scream 3 (2000).
• While on the set of Blindfold: Acts of Obsession (1994) (TV) she met Judd Nelson, and they later became engaged.
• Rumoured to have had a brief romance with Dean Cain.
• (28 December 2000) Arrested on suspicion of drunk driving; released on recognizance.
• (30 April 2001) Pleaded no contest to drunk-driving charges in Ventura County; faces up to six months in prison.
• Was asked to audition for the teen soap "Beverly Hills, 90210" (1990) based on her performance in Heathers (1989).
• Has a tattoo of a cross on her right leg.
• (2001) Released from her "Charmed" contract because of in-fighting between her and her co-star Alyssa Milano.
• (12 June 2001) Sentenced to either 10 days in jail or 20 days of work-release duty, three years probation, and ordered to pay a $1500 fine for drunk-driving charges.
• (1995) Beat future Charmed co-star Alyssa Milano for the role of Rene in cult film Mallrats.
• Shannen had her wages garnisheed by California United Bank when she was on "90210" because she wrote nearly $32,000 worth of bad checks.
  

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