#1995 Giles Bensimon

[shannendoherty-fans]

Shannen Doherty by Giles Bensimon for the September 1995 issue of Elle magazine.

When Shannen Doherty was bad, she was bad enough to play lead bitch in the cult movie Heathers, get booted from Beverly Hills 90210, and have an ex-boyfriend claim in a national magazine that she was planning to sic him with sodomizing hit men.

Things change. Recently, a newly chastened Doherty got to live out a dream – spening a day as a fashion model (which she does here) – and work with one of the hottest young directors of Holywood.

Her latest movie, Mallrats, a Fast Times at Ridgemont High-style film from Clerks creator Kevin Smith; brings out a previously unexplored side of her personality. Doherty, twenty-four, describes her character as "a teenage shopaholic who emerges from every store wearing a different outfit." Hanging out in a mall for four of the six weeks of filming made her feel claustrophobic, she says, but playing a quick-change artist wasn't much of a stretch. "I always wanted to be a model. Whenever I have a photo shoot I practically run to the set. the scary part is that I'm only five foot four," Doherty says. "I met Clauda schiffer the other day and I looked like a midget next to her."

She nevertheless slips on some out-size attittude to pose in Gianni Versace's strict but seductive clothes for fall. For her favourite outfit, a pale blue, slightly boxy suit, she assumes whay she calls "a kind of Italian-stewardess-sexy look."

One role she isn't eager to replay is tabloid cover girl. "People take a character that you act for four years and assume it's you," she says. Brenda, her alter ego in 90210, was "young, immature, flighty, maybe bitchy. I proved that I could act by how strongly people reacted to her." The part made her famous and prompted nationwide circulation of the I Hate Brenda newsletter. But Doherty insists, "I'm nothing like that. Not," she points out, "that I can't strike it up for a photo shoot." – Jennifer Scruby.

[everythingisahoax]

Claudia Schiffer in “Darling, I Shrunk Claudia!” photographed by Giles Bensimon for Top Model Japan, 1995