Profile: Shannen Doherty

Name: Shannen Maria
Surname: Doherty
Date of birth: 12th April 1971
Place of birth: Memphis, Tennesse
Horoscope: Aries
Marital status: single
Height: 160cm (5'3")
Distinguishing features: a tattoo on her thigh.

Shannen was born and raised in Memphis, Tennesse until her parents decided to move to LA when she was just seven years old. Her father worked in a bank while her mother owned a beauty parlour. Her big career break came when she was 11.

She was spotted by Michael Landon (Little House on the Prairie) and cast as Jenny Wilder in the Little House: A New Beginning. Shannen went on to star in Our House and Beverly Hills, 90210, in which she played Brenda Walsh, teenage twin sister to Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestly), from 1990 to 1994.

Heathers was her first big screen break, starring opposite Christian Slater and Winona Ryder. She also starred in the hit comedy Girls Just Want to Have Fun with Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt and later in Night Shift, and Mall Rats. She also played Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone with the Wind in A Burning Passion: The Margaret Mitchell Story, which was followed by a part in Jailbreakers.

She also worked on several mini series such as Gone in the Night Robert Kennedy and His Times and TV programmes such as Sleeping with the Devil, The Ticket and Friends 'Til the End. On a personal level, Shannen has managed to set tongues wagging with her tempestuous relationships and public bust-ups with numerous boyfriends/fiances.

The first public humiliation came with the break up of her engagement to Dean Factor in 1991 and him issuing a restraining order on her. The next fiance was Judd Nelson (of The Breakfast Club fame), who she met on the set of Blindfold:Acts of Obsession. That relationship fell apart too, but soon afterwards, she married Ashley Hamilton, son of actor George Hamilton, just two weeks after meeting him in September 1993. The marriage only lasted 18 months. In 1997 she was sentenced to anger-management counselling by the Beverly Hills Municipal court for an altercation with 22-year-old Corey Hanker.

She has been linked romantically with Dean Cain, Jason Priestly, Adam F Duritz (Counting Crows frontman) and, more recently, engaged to director Rob Weiss, but after two years, that relationship came to an amicable end.