Daveigh Chase, a former child actor known for voicing Lilo in Disney’s animated Lilo & Stitch and playing Samara in The Ring, has died. She was 35.
“Daveigh was the sweetest woman on the planet and this is a huge loss to all of us,” John Ryan Jr., a representative for Chase, told Yahoo. “Daveigh was one of my best friends for the last 17 years and we’ve managed her for over a decade. We were in the middle of a documentary about her during this tragic passing.”
TMZ was first to report Chase’s death. Her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, told TMZ that she died on Tuesday after battling both meningitis and an infection in her blood. He said it had led to septic shock. Hernandez told the outlet that she was hospitalized for malnutrition earlier in June.
Chase, who voiced Lilo, at the premiere and afterparty for Lilo & Stitch in June 2002.
(Kevin Winter/ImageDirect via Getty Images)
“She was the greatest. She loved cats. She worked with cat rescues with us. She was very to herself, ” Ryan told the BBC. “She was not very Hollywood,” he said. “She’d rather eat at Bob’s Big Boy and go home with the cats. She loved acting but wasn’t into the fame scene.
Chase began her Hollywood career in a 1998 episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Over the years, she’s had guest appearances on numerous TV shows, including CSI, Cold Case and Without a Trace. In 2008, she voiced the main character of Betsy on Betsy’s Kindergarten Adventures, a preschool series. Her longest-running role was that of Rhonda, a child bride, in the TV series Big Love, which ran from 2006 to 2011.
But it was perhaps her film roles that she’s most known for. Chase played the younger sister Samantha, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, in the 2001 cult film Donnie Darko. She later reprised the role in 2009’s S. Darko, a direct-to-video sequel.
Chase, center right, in Donnie Darko in 2001.
(Newmarket Releasing/Everett Collection)
In 2002, Chase appeared as the ghostly Samara Morgan in The Ring. That same year, she voiced Chihiro Ogino in the English dub of Spirited Away, from acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. She lent her voice again to Lilo in Disney’s animated Hawaiian adventure Lilo & Stitch, which earned her an Annie Award the following year for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production.
Chase in The Ring, 2002.
(Dreamworks/Everett Collection)
“I just want to make something that I love and people will respect,” Chase told Interview magazine in 2009. “I want to do things that will change someone’s life, not something they’ll forget about tomorrow.”
In 2016, she appeared opposite Rory Culkin and Nikki Reed in the independent horror movie Jack Goes Home. Her final acting role was in the thriller American Romance that same year.
Chase was arrested on a misdemeanor drug possession charge in Los Angeles in 2018. The year prior, she was arrested as a passenger in a stolen BMW during a traffic stop, resulting in a felony booking for riding in a vehicle without the owner’s consent.
Ryan told the California Post that he and a family member of Chase’s had recently hired a private investigator to try and find her after they lost contact. “We were so close to finding her,” he said. “I can’t believe this is real. Her legacy and work will live on forever.”