An icy, irresistible star who was more than a mean girl

Shannen Doherty, who has died aged 53, excelled at playing women too interesting to be boxed in, writes Adam White as she herself suffered at the hands of a vicious tabloid press

- Adam White

Shannen Doherty, who has died at the age of 53 following years of living with cancer, was an actor famous for playing women to whom respect wasn't immediately granted.

Her Nineties TV hits Beverly Hills, 90210 and Charmed – shows embraced by generations of young people growing up both then and now – cast her as characters who, to the unenlightened among us, could be read as bitches or mean girls, those annoying descriptors always levelled at women too complicated and interesting to be simplistically boxed in. But as a skilled if often underrated actor, she was deft at conveying pride and regret beneath the surface grumpiness; the feeling of women only being a certain way because the world has made them so.

Doherty was also one of the OG tabloid fixtures, a child star gone berserk (not really) whose club-hopping and on-set lateness apparently warranted round-the-clock coverage at the top of the Nineties.

She experienced the kind of wrath that could only have existed back then – regular headlines in the National Enquirer that weren’t ignored at the supermarket checkout line but actually had an impact on her career; a popular newsletter for preinternet teens who could come together every month to talk about how much they hated Doherty and Brenda Walsh, the mouthy teen she played in 90210.