Entertainment News: Luke Perry of ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ Dies at 52

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LOS ANGELES – His image, as a brooding heartthrob on the FOX-TV series “Beverly Hills, 90210,” was reflective of the early 1990s. Luke Perry represented both the image and the show, and he died on March 4th, 2019, after suffering a massive stroke on February 27th. He was only 52 years old.

Coy Luther “Luke” Perry III was born in Mansfield, Ohio, and set out for Los Angeles after graduating high school. He found work in soap operas in 1987 and ’88, with “Loving” and “Another World.” But he broke out big in 1990 as Dylan McKay on “Beverly Hills, 90210,” for his role as an outsider character in a high school gang that included Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley), Brenda Walsh (Shannon Doherty), Kelly Taylor (Jenny Garth) and Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering). He left after Season Six, but came back to finish with the series for Seasons Nine and Ten.

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Luke Perry in Chicago in 2012
Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

Perry also had a couple of notable early films, including “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1992) and “8 Seconds” (1994), but his career after 90210 was spottier. Post 2000, he did western TV movies like “A Gunfighter’s Pledge” (2007), and made guest appearances on “Will & Grace,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Raising Hope,” and was a regular on “Body of Proof” (2012). Recently, he landed a role as Archie Andrews father in “Riverdale” (2017-present), and will appear posthumously in the upcoming Quentin Tarantino film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

Luke Perry had been in the news recently, as rumors began that CBS was doing a reboot of 90210 (he had not participated in the second series on the CW Network from 2008-13), and that he was in talks to appear. The same day the green light for the new series was confirmed – February 27th, 2019 – was the same day Perry suffered the stroke that he eventually succumbed to five days later. He died near his home in Burbank, California, and is survived by two children.

Photographer Joe Arce of HollywoodChicago.com took this Exclusive Photo of Luke Perry in August of 2012 at the Chicagoland Wizard World Comic Con. As a Midwestern kid from Ohio, Perry once commented on his success, “I always felt like something of an outsider. But I identified with people up on the screen. That made me feel like I wanted to be up on the screen too. I felt like eventually I would get there.”

The source for this article was Wikipedia.com. Luke Perry, 1966-2019

HollywoodChicago.com senior staff writer Patrick McDonald

By PATRICK McDONALD
Editor and Film Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

© 2019 Patrick McDonald, HollywoodChicago.com

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