Daveigh Chase, the former child actress who terrified a generation as the ghostly Samara in The Ring and charmed millions as the voice of Lilo in Disney's Lilo & Stitch, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. She was 35 years old.
Her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, told TMZ that Chase died from meningitis and a blood infection that triggered sepsis and organ failure. Her father, John Schwallier, confirmed to Fox News that she died of complications from bacterial meningitis, a blood infection, and severe malnutrition.
The medical details only tell part of the story. Chase had been living on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, visibly malnourished and struggling with addiction to heroin and fentanyl, her longtime manager John Ryan told the New York Post. She died with millions of dollars in unclaimed residual payments sitting in a SAG-AFTRA account, money she was, in Ryan's words, "too far gone" to collect.
Chase landed the role of Lilo at age eight, giving voice to one of Disney's most beloved animated characters in the 2002 hit Lilo & Stitch. That same year, she played Samara Morgan in Gore Verbinski's horror blockbuster The Ring, a performance that earned her the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain in 2003, a rare feat for a child actress.
Her résumé was deep for someone so young. She starred as Samantha Darko in the 2001 cult film Donnie Darko, voiced Chihiro in the English dub of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, appeared in 32 episodes of HBO's Big Love as Rhonda Volmer, and portrayed Joyce across 23 episodes of the TV series Oliver Beene.
In a 2009 interview with Interview Magazine, Chase described the kind of work she wanted to do:
"I just want to make something that I love and people will respect. I want to do things that will change someone's life, not something they'll forget about tomorrow."
She never got the chance to fulfill that ambition. Chase's death at 35 marks one of the most tragic arcs in recent Hollywood memory, a child who reached the peak of the industry before adolescence and fell into ruin before middle age.
By late 2025, Chase's manager John Ryan had not been able to reach her for years. SAG-AFTRA had been sending notices to Ryan's office reporting that Chase had unclaimed residual checks, earnings from her childhood work that continued to accumulate. Ryan described the total as millions of dollars. Chase never collected a cent of it.
Ryan, along with Chase's stepsister Gaia Brown and a private investigator, had been searching for her. At the end of 2025, Ryan became aware of footage showing Chase living on Skid Row, the stretch of downtown Los Angeles long associated with homelessness, open drug use, and severe mental health crises.
Ryan managed to get Chase on the phone after seeing the footage. He planned to send her to a rehabilitation facility in Costa Rica owned by a friend. But when he went to Skid Row to retrieve her, Chase had "disappeared," the New York Post reported.
The video of Chase on Skid Row has since been removed from social media. No platform or account was identified.
Earlier this month, Chase was admitted to a Los Angeles hospital for malnutrition. Her condition deteriorated rapidly from there. AP News reported that Chase had been homeless in Los Angeles with her boyfriend near the hospital where she died, and that she had struggled with drug addiction since age 13.
On Monday, the day before Chase died, Hernandez launched a GoFundMe campaign titled "Help Daveigh Chase Find Comfort & Peace." In the campaign description, he wrote that Chase had been "diagnosed with meningitis and several serious blood infections" and that "her condition has become critical."
Hernandez described their relationship and Chase's struggles in stark terms, as Breitbart News detailed:
"After a difficult childhood and a painful falling out with her family, Daveigh was bullied and struggled to find safety and happiness in downtown LA."
He added:
"When we met, I promised to protect her and give her the love and comfort she deserved. All she ever wanted was a place where we could live together, feel safe, and be happy. Now, more than ever, I want to give her that sense of home and peace in her final days."
But the campaign itself became a point of dispute. Chase's former manager John Ryan Jr. pushed back sharply, telling Fox News that Hernandez was unknown to Chase's family and inner circle.
"This man making these claims brought her into the hospital in terrible condition and didn't let any of the family know until she passed so he can control the dialogue."
Ryan also stated that Chase had a trust account set up at SAG-AFTRA to cover costs, raising questions about the necessity of the crowdfunding effort. The tension between Hernandez's public account and the family's version remains unresolved.
Chase's story raises uncomfortable questions about the machinery of child stardom and what happens when it stops. She earned enough in residuals alone to live comfortably for the rest of her life. The money was there. The union knew it. Her manager knew it. She could not, or would not, claim it.
Ryan told the New York Post that Chase was "hooked on heroin and fentanyl." No other source in the available reporting independently confirmed the specific substances, though AP News reported she had struggled with addiction since age 13. The death of Matthew Perry and the criminal prosecution that followed it showed how substance abuse can claim even the most recognizable performers, and how the people around them sometimes enable the destruction rather than prevent it.
Chase's case is different in its details but similar in its trajectory. A child performer with extraordinary talent. An industry that profited from her work. A system that could not, or did not, intervene effectively as she spiraled.
The entertainment world has mourned too many performers gone far too young. In Chase's case, the gap between her professional accomplishments and her personal circumstances at the time of death is almost impossible to reconcile. A woman who voiced one of Disney's most iconic characters died malnourished, homeless, and largely alone, while millions of dollars in earnings gathered dust in an institutional account.
Several questions remain open. The exact circumstances of Chase's final months, how she ended up hospitalized, who was caring for her, and why her family was reportedly kept in the dark, have not been fully accounted for. The dispute between Hernandez and Ryan over the GoFundMe campaign and who controlled access to Chase in her final days adds a layer of conflict that may take time to sort out.
No official cause-of-death determination from a coroner or medical examiner has been reported. The accounts from Hernandez and Chase's father align on the medical basics, meningitis, blood infection, sepsis, but differ on context and responsibility.
The grief that follows a public death often obscures the harder questions about what went wrong before the end. In Chase's case, those questions deserve answers, not just for her memory, but for every child performer who enters an industry that is far better at creating fame than protecting the people who carry it.
Hollywood made Daveigh Chase a star before she was old enough to drive. It owed her more than a GoFundMe page and a Skid Row sidewalk.
