American actress Daveigh Chase, known for her roles in the films “The Ring” and “Donnie Darko,” died at the age of 35 from meningitis (inflammation of the membranes of the brain) and sepsis (blood poisoning), the TMZ portal reported, citing her lover Roy Hernandez. The artist's father, John Schwallier, added in an interview with the New York Times (NYT) that his daughter had suffered from drug addiction since adolescence and had recently been living on the streets of Los Angeles with her partner.
As Schwallier noted, he had not communicated with his daughter, who bore her mother’s surname, since her 19th birthday, but managed to visit her in the hospital, where she was admitted due to exhaustion shortly before her death. Chase also had no contact with her mother, he said. Her parents divorced when the future actress was three years old.
Chase began her career as a child by filming commercials and individual episodes of the TV series Sabrina the Teenage Witch and ER. At the age of 12, she received her breakthrough role in voicing the main character of the Disney feature film Lilo and Stitch. She returned to the character of Lilo in a number of sequels to the film, and also gave the voice to the main character of Spirited Away in the English dub.
In 2002, Chase also played Samara on the big screen, the dark-haired girl who crawled out of the TV in the American version of the horror film The Ring. A year earlier, the actress played the role of the younger sister of the protagonist of the cult thriller “Donnie Darko” with Jake Gyllenhaal, and in 2009 she played in its lesser-known sequel “S. Darko”, where she became the main character.
As a teenager, she starred in the HBO series Big Love, about a Mormon family, and then in a number of independent low-budget films. Since 2016, Chase's name began to appear in the media in connection with her problems with the law. In 2017, she was detained as a passenger in a stolen car, and a year later – for possession of prohibited substances.
Schwallier noted that the daughter and her lover were homeless and “living in poverty.” Hernandez started a GoFundMe fundraiser shortly before Chase's death and then asked her fans to help pay for funeral and medical debts.
The actress's former manager, John Ryan, responded by accusing the man of trying to make money from the tragedy, emphasizing that the actress's relatives bear all expenses. He told Deadline that Hernandez “should be in jail” given the condition in which he took his lover to the hospital.
“This GoFundMe will not go towards expenses related to Davey's death. Davey's real family takes care of everything. We have contacted GoFundMe to notify them that the page appeared while Davey was already unconscious, and we ask that everyone submit complaints about this fundraiser and not participate in it,” Ryan told Deadline.
Hernandez, in a comment to TMZ, denied the accusations against him, calling them “100% false.”
