| Back in the early 90s, her haughty hotness was the only good reason to tune in the sappy Beverly Hills 90210. It was brutal watching Shannen Doherty pair up with sideburns host organism Luke Perry, but we persevered. When she became even more famous for a string of screwups - a shovefest with a wannabe actress, a rash of bounced checks, a blink-and-you missed-it marriage - it became uncool to like Shannen, but we persevered. "I definitely lived my life like I wasn't in the public eye" is how she sums up her wacko phase. To "figure out who I was," she left 90210 in 1994. Instead of winding up on Jenny Jones rehashing the past with Danny Bonaduce, however, Shannen bounced back with a hit series, Charmed, starring as the oldest of three sexy sorceress sisters (Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs play the other two). When our chance arose to question Shannen in the flesh, we knew that the risk of being permanently bewitched was high. But some how - duh! - we persevered. Maxim: Did you study up on witchcraft to get ready for your role on Charmed? Shannen Doherty: I bought some books. I'm not a big believer in occult stuff, but there was this one spell about how to connect with Satan. That horrified me. M: Were you tempted to try any of the spells yourself? SD: Well, there was this one love spell where you put a photo of the man you like underneath your pillow and chant every night for seven nights under a waxing moon. Supposedly he'll think of you every single day and then arrive at your door. M: Hmm... I've been thinking about you all week, and now here I am. SD: [laughs]: I didn't actually go through with it, I mean, seven days - that's a pretty big commitment. M: Isn't that about how long you knew George Hamilton's son Ashley before you two go hitched in 1993? SD: I met Ashley two weeks before I married him. It was a joke - the most ridiculous thing I've ever done. My friends looked at me like, What the hell are you doing? And once I was married, I didn't want to be a failure, so I stuck it out for six months, which was about six months too long. M: That was just one of the incidents that got you labeled a Hollywood bad girl. How much did the notoriety suck? SD: For a while I couldn't leave the house by myself. Even if I was just grocery shopping alone. I'd get self-conscious and think, What are these people saying about me? But now I'm more secure - if I'm hungry, my ass is going to the store. M: So are you dating again? SD: I still get nervous on dates. I'll be sitting at dinner with a guy and I have to excuse myself and go to the bathroom because I can't breathe. If I kind of like a guy, then I'm a fantastic flirt. But with a guy I truly like, I get painfully shy. M: I understand you're big on interior decorating. What do you look for in a guy's bachelor pad? SD: Something clean - no layers of dust on the coffee table. But I prefer cozy and warm to stark and sterile. You don't have to spend a lot of money to give your place personality. M: What else do you look for in men? SD: Character in their faces, I don't care for perfect teeth or chiseled features. Scars are good. M: Aaron Spelling, Charmed's producer, has said that you're incapable of lying. Why is that? SD: When I was little, my mom told me that if I lied, the devil would visit me in my sleep. To this day, if I tell even the smallest lie, I have bad dreams. Plus, I'm no good at it. I can never remember what I said, so I contradict myself a million times and end up feeling so guilty that I confess the truth anyway. M: So tell the truth: Were you surprised when Charmed became such a hit? SD: I sort of felt that people would dig it because the concept is really cool, I like Party of Five and Felecity, but someone's always dying of cancer or getting beaten - tragedy left and right. Charmed is fun and light, one of those shows that let you turn your brain off for an hour. M: Do TV witches have fun off-camera too? SD: When you're working 12-hour days, you've gotta have fun. Probably the best night we have on the set is Friday - food-fight night. We collect grapes and just have a full-on war. M: Who gets to be on your team? SD: It's Holly and me versus the entire crew. Alyssa is usually the gatherer, collecting the grapes and handing them to us. Or she's on the phone. M: Another lie-detector test: Do you and Alyssa get along? SD: She's become one of my closest friends. But the tabloids keep trying to pit us against each other. They actually printed a story that said I'm sick of Alyssa having bigger breasts than me, so I've demanded that Aaron buy me a boob job. I actually wish I had smaller breasts. M: [concerned]: Really? SD: Absolutely 100 percent true. I'm one of those women who put on a tank and think, Ugh, if they were smaller, I wouldn't have to wear bras as much. M: Have there been times when you thanked God the National Enquirer wasn't there? SD: Just the other night I was out with some friends at the concert. We play dare a lot, and you cannot wuss out. Somebody dated me to fall ridiculously in public, so I'm walking down some stairs and just fell about eight steps into Holly's boyfriend. All these strangers were staring, and I thought, Oh, God they're all going to think I'm wasted off my ass. M: Do you ever get sick of living in a media fishbowl? SD: Whenever I get frustrated, I tell myself, Ok, you could be working at a 7-Eleven right now, so never take for granted what you do for a living. M: Who would win in a fight - Prue Halliwell, who you play, or Sabrina, the Teenage Witch? SD: I'm not sure - Sabrina's had her powers longer, and Prue is still breaking hers in. But I'd rather take her on than Samantha from Bewitched. She'd make dust out of me. M: What's the most embarrassing way you've even blown a take on the show? SD: In one scene, I was running while wearing high heels and a tiny skirt. I tripped and did the splits in midair, and my G-string underwear sort of... shifted. The whole crew saw everything. M: Did it bring you closer to them? SD: For two weeks I couldn't look them in the eye. |