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Actor Luke Perry, of Riverdale and 90210, has died at 52

Perry died shortly after being hospitalized for a stroke.

Summer 2018 TCA Press Tour - Day 13
Summer 2018 TCA Press Tour - Day 13
Luke Perry at a Riverdale panel during the 2018 TCA press tour.
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
Constance Grady
Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater.

Actor Luke Perry, star of Beverly Hills, 90210, is dead. According to a report from TMZ and confirmed by other outlets, Perry died Monday morning after being hospitalized on February 27 following a stroke. He was 52 years old.

At the time of his death, Perry “was surrounded by his children Jack and Sophie, fiancé Wendy Madison Bauer, ex-wife Minnie Sharp, mother Ann Bennett, step-father Steve Bennett, brother Tom Perry, sister Amy Coder, and other close family and friends,” said a representative in a statement to People magazine. “The family appreciates the outpouring of support and prayers that have been extended to Luke from around the world, and respectfully request privacy in this time of great mourning. No further details will be released at this time.”

Perry is best known for playing beloved bad boy Dylan McKay on the hit ’90s teen drama 90210, where he was a main cast member for six of the show’s 10 seasons. He was something of a ubiquitous fixture in teen pop culture of the early ’90s: He was on the cover of every magazine, and besides 90210, he was the love interest in the 1992 Buffy movie.

Although Perry continued to work steadily after he left 90210 in 1996 — he did a couple of seasons of Oz and a lot of guest-starring work — his career went through a bit of a fallow period until 2016, when he was cast as Archie Andrews’s dad in the CW’s Riverdale. It was a meta piece of casting that winked at Perry’s teen heartthrob past — almost all of the parent characters on Riverdale are played by former teen stars — and it all but confirmed that Perry is inescapably linked to his time as Dylan McKay.

But Perry was philosophical about his most famous role.

“I’m going to be linked with him until I die, but that’s actually just fine,” he said in 2008. “I created Dylan McKay. He’s mine.”

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