From The Ring Girl to Hollywood's Brightest: Remembering Daveigh Chase

The child actor who terrified a generation as the cursed girl crawling through television screens has died. Daveigh Chase, best known for her haunting portrayal of Samara Morgan in The Ring and her voice work as Lilo in Disney’s Lilo&Stitch, passed away in June 2026 at just 35 years old after contracting meningitis and subsequent blood infections that developed into sepsis.

Chase’s career arc reads like a Hollywood fairytale with a bittersweet ending. Born in Nevada and raised in Oregon, she broke into acting with a 1998 appearance on Sabrina the Teenage Witch before landing more substantial roles in shows like Charmed, ER, and The Practice. But it was her 2002 breakthrough—the same year Lilo&Stitch hit theaters—that cemented her place in pop culture. That film role introduced audiences to an unforgettable character. In The Ring, Chase embodied pure terror: streaky black hair, a bloodied white gown, and a supernatural fury that made her an instant icon. By 2003, at just 12 years old, she’d already won the Best Villain award at the MTV Movie Awards for the role, delivering an acceptance speech channeling the demonic character that made her famous.

What followed was a steady stream of work that showed remarkable range. She voiced Lilo across multiple Lilo&Stitch projects through 2006, played Rhonda Volmer on HBO’s Big Love, appeared in films like S. Darko and Donnie Darko, and even performed music on various soundtracks. Chase remained active in the industry through 2016, when her final roles—Shanda in Jack Goes Home and Krissy Madison in American Romance—marked the end of her on-screen presence.

The decade between her last film and her death in 2026 remains largely out of public view. What we do know comes from her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, who revealed in a GoFundMe page that Chase had faced a difficult childhood, family estrangement, and struggled to find safety and stability in downtown Los Angeles. When they met, Hernandez wrote, he promised to protect her and offer the love and comfort she deserved. Those final months brought hospitalization, meningitis, serious blood infections, and ultimately, a battle she couldn’t win.

Chase’s story is a reminder of the often-hidden costs of child stardom. She gave Hollywood some of its most memorable moments—screams that still echo in viewers’minds, a voice that defined a generation’s childhood. But the industry that made her famous offered no safety net when she needed one most. Her legacy lives in the characters she created, but her loss speaks to a larger conversation about how we protect young performers and what we owe them after the cameras stop rolling.