3 min readHyderabadJun 18, 2026 09:32 AM IST
Daveigh Chase, the actress remembered for two very different but equally iconic roles, the gentle voice of Lilo in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch and the terrifying presence of Samara Morgan in The Ring, has died at 35. Her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez shared with TMZ that she passed away on Tuesday following complications tied to meningitis.
Hernandez had set up a GoFundMe page for Chase only days before her death. He had then shared, “Daveigh was diagnosed with meningitis and several serious blood infections. Her condition has become critical, and the doctors have told me she may not have much time left.”
Chase was born Daveigh Elizabeth Chase on July 24, 1990, in Las Vegas, and grew up in Albany, Oregon. Her path into show business started early, with commercial and stage work beginning at age seven. By eight, she was landing parts on television shows including Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Charmed, The Practice and ER. In 2001, director Richard Kelly cast her as Samantha Darko in the now cult favorite Donnie Darko, opposite lead actor Jake Gyllenhaal.
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That same year, she lent her voice to Chihiro Ogino for the English language version of Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away, though it was the following year that truly established her. In 2002, she voiced the title character in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, playing an orphaned girl from Hawaii who adopts what she believes is an unusual stray dog, only to discover he is actually an alien named Stitch. The role carried her through multiple sequels and into the animated series that ran from 2003 to 2006.
Chase’s other major 2002 role pushed her in the opposite direction entirely. She appeared as Samara Morgan, the pale, dark haired ghost at the center of Gore Verbinski’s horror hit The Ring, a performance so unsettling that it became inseparable from the film itself despite Chase being only 12-years-old at the time.
Television work continued through the following decade. From 2006 to 2011, she had a recurring role as Rhonda Volmer, a calculating teenager, on HBO’s Big Love, and in 2009 she returned to the world of Donnie Darko by reprising Samantha in the spinoff S. Darko.
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Her final film role came in 2016, in director Thomas Dekker’s horror feature Jack Goes Home, after which she stepped away from acting almost entirely. In the GoFundMe post, Hernandez described some of the harder chapters of her life away from the screen, referencing bullying she had faced and a rift with her family. He wrote that she had a difficult time finding stability and safety while living in downtown Los Angeles, but that the two of them had still managed to find genuine moments of happiness together before her health took a turn.
According to TMZ, she had been hospitalized earlier in the month for malnutrition, shortly before the infections that ultimately led to her death.
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