Former child star Daveigh Chase, who established a varied career with a haunting turn as Samara Morgan in “The Ring” and as the bighearted outcast Lilo in Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch,” has died.
The actor’s father, John David Schwallier, confirmed to the New York Times that Chase died in a hospital of complications from bacterial meningitis and a blood infection. TMZ first broke the news of Chase’s death on Wednesday, citing the actor’s boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, who said the actor also dealt with septic issues before her death. Additionally, Chase battled with drug addiction and was homeless before her death. She was 35.
Chase began her Hollywood career in the late 1990s with minor roles in popular TV series including “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” “Charmed” and “ER,” and would go on to star in multiple beloved movies at the turn of the century. In 2001 cult classic “Donnie Darko,” she was Samantha, the younger sister to Jake Gyllenhaal’s troubled Donnie Darko. She would reprise the role eight years later for the sequel, “S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale”
The same year as “Donnie Darko,” Chase lent her voice to the American dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s tender “Spirited Away,” voicing its brave and stubborn protagonist Chihiro. The film won the animated feature prize at the 2003 Academy Awards.
Chase gained a reputation for her range, further supported by roles in “Lilo & Stitch” and “The Ring” in the same year. In the former, she voiced the Elvis-loving Lilo who finds the solution for her outcast status in a mischievous alien. That performance earned Chase an Annie Award for voice acting in an animated film in 2003 and secured her the lead voice-acting role in Disney Channel’s follow-up series. Months after “Lilo & Stitch” hit the big screen, audiences would see Chase turn down the charm and turn up the scares for her stint as ghost girl Samara Morgan in “The Ring,” the first in a series of films. The horror classic is a remake of a 1998 Japanese film based off Koji Suzuki’s 1991 novel.
Most memorably, Chase’s Samara is clad in a nightgown and obscured by a head of jet black hair, an eerie look that would become iconic for horror fans and, eventually, fodder for laughs in “Scary Movie 3.” Chase told the The Times in 2002 of playing the iconic character: “ I just kind of took my own voice and put this freaky twist on it.”
“The producer for this movie told me she was a lot like Linda Blair in ‘The Exorcist,’” she said. “I saw part of that, and what really freaked me out was when she was crawling up upside down and backwards down the stairs — kind of like the spider.”
In the aughts, Chase also appeared in more than 20 episodes of the Fox sitcom “Oliver Beene” and over 30 episodes of HBO’s Emmy-nominated Mormon family drama “Big Love” as cunning teenager Rhonda Volmer. After the hit series, Chase’s career slowed and she appeared in lower-profile projects. Her final credit was a voice-acting role in the 2016 video game “Let It Die.”
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