The former child actress who gave voice to Disney’s beloved Lilo and terrified audiences as the ghost girl crawling from a television screen in The Ring has died at age 35. Daveigh Chase passed away on June 17, 2026, from complications of meningitis at a Los Angeles hospital.
Chase’s boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, confirmed her death to multiple outlets, stating that a blood infection triggered septic complications that resulted in her body shutting down. The actress had been hospitalized in early June due to severe malnutrition.
Prior to her passing, Hernandez had launched a GoFundMe campaign seeking $5,500 to cover Chase’s medical expenses. By Wednesday evening, the fundraiser had collected $1,300. In his appeal for support, Hernandez wrote that Chase had “always been a light in my life,” though “behind the scenes, she’s faced more than her share of hardship.”
Born Daveigh Elizabeth Chase on July 24, 1990, in Las Vegas, Nevada, and raised in Albany, Oregon, the performer launched her entertainment career at age four with voiceover and theater work. By age seven, she secured her first Hollywood television appearance with a small part in Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Her first major breakthrough arrived in 2001 when she played Samantha Darko in Richard Kelly’s cult film Donnie Darko, which featured Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role. She reprised the role in the 2009 sequel S. Darko.
The year 2002 proved to be a career-defining moment for the young actress. She voiced the title character of Lilo Pelekai, a young Hawaiian girl without parents who adopts what she thinks is a dog but is actually an alien, in Disney’s animated hit Lilo & Stitch. The role earned her an Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production, and she reprised the character in multiple sequels and the 2003-2006 television series.
That same year, at just 12 years old, Chase became the ghostly face of Gore Verbinski’s horror hit The Ring as Samara Morgan, the pale child with long dark hair and a white dress who crawls out of a television screen with deadly supernatural powers. The role earned her the 2003 MTV Movie Award for Best Villain, beating out Willem Dafoe for Spider-Man, Daniel Day-Lewis for Gangs of New York, Colin Farrell for Daredevil, and Mike Myers for Austin Powers in Goldmember.
In a 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Chase said she enjoyed playing such an unusual character. “It is not your typical character. Usually they are looking for a happy-go-lucky kid, but Samara was a pretty interesting character to play,” she said.
Chase also voiced Chihiro Ogino in the 2001 English dub of Studio Ghibli’s acclaimed film Spirited Away. Her television credits included single-episode appearances in Charmed, ER, The Practice, and Touched by an Angel. From 2006 to 2011, she had a 32-episode recurring role on HBO’s polygamy drama Big Love as young sociopath Rhonda Volmer, a child bride.
Following her appearance in Thomas Dekker’s 2016 horror film Jack Goes Home, Chase stepped away from acting. She slipped out of the spotlight in 2013 and retreated from public view entirely in 2017, when she posted on social media for the last time. She officially retired from full-time acting in 2015.
Chase’s manager of 15 years, John Ryan Jr., remembered her on Wednesday as someone who eschewed the Hollywood lifestyle. Ryan said Chase was devoted to feline rescue work and preferred a quiet life with her cats to the celebrity scene, often choosing to dine at Bob’s Big Boy rather than trendy restaurants.
Ryan noted that Chase kept homes in Nevada and downtown Los Angeles and would often retreat to Las Vegas for years at a time, turning down big studio films to work on independent projects instead.
He wrote that following a troubled upbringing and estrangement from her relatives, Chase was bullied and struggled to find safety and happiness in downtown Los Angeles. “When we met, I promised to protect her and give her the love and comfort she deserved,” Hernandez said. “Together, we found moments of happiness and hope.”
Following her retirement from acting, Chase experienced several personal and legal difficulties. In 2017, she was arrested in Los Angeles on a felony charge after being found riding as a passenger in a vehicle that had been reported stolen. The following year, she was arrested on a misdemeanor drug possession charge and spent a short time in a Hollywood jail. By November 2018, Chase faced two misdemeanor counts: possession of a controlled substance without a valid prescription and possession of drug paraphernalia.
In 2025 and early 2026, friends had searched for Chase on Los Angeles’s Skid Row in the months before her death, according to reports.
