Shannen Doherty: The Calm After The Storm

Former "Beverly Hills, 90210" wild thing Shannen Doherty claims to have calmed down so that she can focus on parlaying her small-screen fame from "Charmed" into a big-screen career. She's starting with the upcoming Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

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When the editor of this magazine asked me to conduct an interview with former "Beverly Hills, 90210" star Shannen Doherty, who has recently quit "Charmed" but is busy making the TV movie Another Day with Francis Ford Coppola and will soon appear in Kevin Smith's quirky comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I felt like Luca Brasi being sent to sniff out the Tattaglias. I wondered aloud if I should wear a flak jacket. After all, this is a woman who, in the early '90s, allegedly pulled a gun on a former fiancé, tried to run him over with her car and threatened to have him sodomized on his front lawn. In 1997, she was sentenced to anger management counseling by the Beverly Hills Municipal Court after she got into an argument with a 22-year-old man and smashed a beer bottle on his car window. Last year, she was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and was also accused of verbally harassing the proprietor of a yogurt store after she was told that her favorite flavor had sold out. In between these explosive, tabloid-worthy incidents were the more quotidian restraining orders, barroom brawls, and shouting matches with her "90210" producer Aaron Spelling, plus a love affair with Judd Nelson (whom she met on the set of the film Blindfold: Acts of Obsession) and a seven-month marriage to Ashley Hamilton, son of George.

After a week of negotiations with Doherty's publicist, we agree to meet at Cafe Des Artistes, a hip, ficus-festooned hideaway on one of the quieter side streets of Hollywood. I arrive early to secure a table. She's late. Her publicist calls to say that it'll be another 45 minutes. I nurse a vodka and tonic and wonder if I should remove the sharp objects from the table. And then Doherty sweeps in with her entourage. Not only her PR gal, but her mother (who's now on her payroll) and her little goddaughter. They seat themselves at a table across the room while Doherty comes over to my table, takes my hand and tells me how sorry she is for keeping me waiting. She looks younger than her years, and, like most actors, she's smaller than she looks on TV--a shade under five foot four and a waiflike 97 pounds.

"How are you dealing with having just turned 30?"

"I'm happy to put my twenties behind me." I'll bet.

"How did you celebrate?"

"I went to San Francisco for the weekend."

"With whom?"

"A friend." She had been in a seven-year relationship with writer-director Rob Weiss (Amongst Friends), but now she says they're merely best friends. "He went through the most tumultuous times of my life with me, and he played an essential part in my growing up."

Doherty is so composed and cooperative that I wonder if I'm not interrogating a clone. While she's pulling the leaves off her artichoke, I confess that I'm having trouble reconciling this Girl Scout across the table with the actress whose exhibits have been tabloid fodder for years.

"The tabloids are terrific at taking two percent of the truth and turning it into a huge story," she says. "If I did half of what the tabloids said I did, I'd be dead."

"Are you saying you weren't a pain in the ass on the set of 'Beverly Hills, 90210'?" She leans back, smiles and then offers the following self-analysis.

"I signed up to do a show that was part of the teenage, pop culture thing, but I also wanted to do a show that meant something. I was used to playing intelligent girls who had something going for them. Also, I grew up in a house where my opinions were valued. So it was disappointing to me when my opinions about my character, Brenda, were ignored and when Brenda got reduced to being a bitch who spent her time worrying about who was sleeping with whom. I was not happy doing a soap opera. On top of which my life had completely changed, and I was having a really hard time dealing with it. People would pretend to be my friends and then go sell stories about me to The National Enquirer. I'd wake up and there'd be photographers taking pictures of me through my bedroom window. I didn't know who I could trust. I felt like a caged animal."

"Why didn't you just quit the show?" I ask.

"I was under contract. And the longer it continued the worse it got, because I thought, 'Who do these people think they are? I'll show them.' So I went out at night and gave the tabloids even more to write about. I'd go out and drink six or seven kamikazes to escape my problems."

"Did you try to run over your fiancé?"

"Look. I have good aim. If I really wanted to run him over, I wouldn't have missed."

"Were you abusive to the owner of a yogurt store?"

"I hate yogurt," says Doherty. "I've never even walked into a yogurt store."

"Though you hated starring on '90210,' you agreed to do another series, 'Charmed.' What made you want to go back to TV?"

"Granted, 'Charmed' is not 'Law & Order,' but at least I was working and getting paid."

"Then why did you leave the show?"

"After three seasons I felt I had done all I could do with the character. They would not allow me to push the envelope any further."

"Do you feel as if your safety net is now gone?"

"Not at all. I feel it's one of the more exciting times of my life. To finally realize the kind of work I want to do and to just put myself out there--it's a risk, but that's the exciting part. To challenge myself makes for an interesting career and life."

One of her new challenges is starring in and producing with Francis Ford Coppola the TV movie Another Day. "I have great respect for Francis," she says. "It's nice to be able to work with someone of that caliber. And then there's the material, which is challenging. It's the kind of work I want to do from here on out."

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