I only watched Beverly Hills: 90210 when my female college roommates tried forcing me to “bond” with them. I’ve never watched a single episode of Charmed. I did watch Little House on the Prairie, even knowing how fabricated most of it was. Thus concludes my short list of what I know about the (as of July 13, 2024) late actress Shannen Doherty’s acting career (without going to IMDB). She is pictured on the far left. She died of breast cancer July 13, 2024.

There is an even greater project Shannen Doherty attached her name to, and that was the 1988 film Heathers, in which she played Heather Duke. I am a Heather by birth, so naturally I have a fondness for trivial facts about things and people named…Heather. Doherty is the second of the three actresses who played Heathers in that movie to have met her maker, the first was Kim Walker (pictured second from the right), who died of a brain tumor in 2001. In a strange twist of fate, one of her character’s best quotes from that film also foreshadowed her death:

Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?

Of the three Heathers actresses from the movie, only Lisanne Falk (who played Heather McNamara) still lives. She is pictured second from the left. In the movie, she attempts suicide by taking too many sleeping pills in the school restroom, but Winona Ryder’s character, Veronica Sawyer, stops her.

Heather McNamara: “What are you trying to do, kill me?”

Veronica Sawyer: “What are you trying to do – sleep?”

Kim Walker wasn’t the first actor from the film to die an untimely death. Actor Jeremy Applegate, who was the bit character Peter Dawson (who prays he will never commit suicide in the movie) died by suicide in 2000.

And of course, actress Winona Ryder, who played a reluctant “friend” of the Heathers in the film, also still lives. Perhaps this is a fitting photo of Winona Ryder and Shannen Doherty as she assumes power at Westerberg High by taking the red scrunchie:

There’s a new sheriff in town!