Daveigh Chase, the child actress who voiced Lilo in Disney’s Lilo and Stitch and terrified audiences as Samara Morgan in The Ring, died on June 16, 2026, aged 35, from meningitis and blood infections.
Daveigh Chase, the former child actress who voiced Lilo in Disney’s beloved 2002 animated film Lilo and Stitch and won an MTV Movie Award for Best Villain for her haunting performance as Samara Morgan in The Ring, has died at the age of 35. The news broke on June 17, 2026, sending shockwaves through Hollywood and devastating a generation of fans who grew up with her voice in their ears and her ghostly image burned into their memories.
Chase died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. She was 35 years old.
How She Died
The actress’s boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, confirmed to TMZ that Daveigh died from meningitis and an infection in her blood, which caused septic issues and led to her body shutting down. Daveigh had been admitted to a hospital in Los Angeles earlier this month because of malnutrition.
Hernandez had just this week set up a GoFundMe page for the ailing Chase, writing that she had been diagnosed with meningitis and several serious blood infections and that her condition had become critical, with doctors telling him she may not have much time left.
Chase’s father also confirmed her death to the New York Times, saying that she had been homeless and living in Los Angeles with her boyfriend. He told the newspaper she had been struggling with drugs since the age of 13.
An Instagram user who identified himself as Chase’s uncle, Paul Schwallier, mourned her passing in a post shared on Wednesday. “Some of you may know her as Lilo Pelekai, Samara Morgan, Rhonda Volmer or, simply, Chihiro,” he wrote. Daveigh, my beautiful, ultra-talented, and only niece, passed away last night. May the Heavenly Father take her in his arms and shower her with love and peace for eternity.”
The Girl Behind Lilo
Born in Las Vegas, Chase was raised in Albany, Oregon. Her first acting credits came when she was just seven years old, appearing in commercials. She won the role of Lilo the following year, at the age of eight.
She then did her first commercial with Campbell’s Soup when she was 7, during a visit to Los Angeles. She started her acting career in 1998 in an episode of the sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
The role that would define her legacy and introduce her to a generation came in 2002. Chase voiced Lilo Pelekai, the young Hawaiian protagonist in Disney’s Lilo and Stitch. For her role, she won an Annie Award for outstanding voice acting in an animated feature production and went on to lend her voice to several spinoffs.
Lilo and Stitch became one of Disney’s most cherished animated films. The story of a lonely Hawaiian girl who adopts what she believes to be a dog but is actually an alien experiment gave Chase the opportunity to voice a character full of warmth, humour, grief, and resilience. Twenty-four years later, that performance still resonates. The film’s enduring popularity through streaming and the recent live-action remake introduced Lilo to entirely new generations of children, keeping Chase’s voice performance alive and relevant long after its original theatrical release.
Chase also voiced Chihiro Ogino in the American dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, Studio Ghibli’s Academy Award-winning masterpiece, one of the most celebrated animated films ever made. That she voiced the lead characters in both Lilo and Stitch and the American version of Spirited Away in the same year speaks to the remarkable range and quality she brought to voice work at just twelve years old.
Samara Morgan: The Face of a Generation’s Nightmares
If Lilo made Daveigh Chase beloved, Samara Morgan made her unforgettable in an entirely different way.
Also in 2002, Chase appeared in Gore Verbinski’s horror hit The Ring. As Samara Morgan, the lank-haired little girl dressed in white and possessing deadly supernatural powers, at just 12 years old Chase became the ghostly face of the film and its most recognizable character.
The Ring was one of the most influential horror films of the early 2000s, popularising the J-horror genre in the United States and inspiring a wave of supernatural horror films that dominated the decade. At the centre of it was Chase’s performance: still, unsettling, and genuinely terrifying in a way that relied not on screaming or exaggerated movement but on an eerie, controlled stillness that she maintained throughout.
She was named Best Villain at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards, beating out Spider-Man’s Willem Dafoe, Gangs of New York’s Daniel Day-Lewis, Daredevil’s Colin Farrell, and Mike Myers, who had portrayed both Dr. Evil and Goldmember in Austin Powers in Goldmember. That she defeated some of the most celebrated adult actors of a generation at the age of twelve, for a performance built almost entirely on physical stillness and atmosphere, was an astonishing achievement.
Chase’s performance was also used as archival footage in the 2005 sequel The Ring Two and 2017’s Rings. Her Samara became the defining visual of an entire era of horror cinema.
A Career Beyond the Icons
While Lilo and Samara were the roles that defined her public legacy, Chase’s career extended well beyond those two landmarks.
After making appearances in Charmed, The Practice and ER, she starred in 2001’s Donnie Darko. In that cult classic, she played Samantha Darko, the younger sister of Jake Gyllenhaal’s lead character. She starred in the direct-to-video sequel, S. Darko, in 2009.
From 2006 to 2011, Chase recurred on HBO’s Big Love as young sociopath Rhonda Volmer. The performance was widely praised as one of the series’ most compelling recurring character turns, demonstrating that Chase’s abilities extended well beyond horror and animation into complex, layered dramatic work.
Her last acting roles came in 2016. Her last acting credit was in 2016 as the voice of Kiwako Seto in the video game Let It Die. After that, she largely withdrew from public life.
The Difficult Years
The final chapter of Daveigh Chase’s life was marked by struggle that stands in painful contrast to the brightness of her childhood achievements.
Over the past few years, Chase had a few run-ins with the law for drug offences. Hernandez called Chase the “light in my life” and said that even though she was a child actor, she “faced more than her share of hardship. ” He wrote in the GoFundMe that after a difficult childhood and a painful falling out with her family, Daveigh 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 wrote. “Together, we found moments of happiness and hope.”
“All she ever wanted was a place where we could live together, feel safe, and be happy,” the GoFundMe reads. “Now, more than ever, I want to give her that sense of home and peace in her final days.”
Chase’s story is one that the entertainment industry has witnessed too many times. A child thrust into the adult world of Hollywood at an age when most children are still figuring out friendship groups and playground games, carrying the weight of major productions on her shoulders, and then navigating the long and difficult question of what comes after the spotlight moves on. The industry that celebrates child performers rarely provides the infrastructure or support needed to carry those performers through to healthy adult lives.
The World Remembers
The reaction from across the entertainment world was immediate. Fans of Lilo and Stitch, The Ring, Spirited Away, Donnie Darko, and Big Love flooded social media with tributes, sharing memories of the roles that Chase had made her own and the impact those performances had on their lives.
For many people, Daveigh Chase was the voice of their childhood. Lilo was the misfit who did not fit in, who loved deeply, who lost her parents and held her family together with fierce, stubborn love. For a generation of children who felt like they did not quite belong, Lilo spoke to something real. Chase’s voice made that possible.
And for an equally large number of people, she was Samara, the image that made them afraid to watch television alone in the dark, the face at the bottom of the well that has stayed with them for over two decades. That Chase could inhabit both of those characters in the same year, at twelve years old, speaks to something genuinely extraordinary.
Full Filmography
Voice roles: Lilo in Lilo and Stitch and its television series (2002 onwards), Chihiro Ogino in the American dub of Spirited Away (2002), Betsy in Betsy’s Kindergarten Adventures (PBS Kids), Kiwako Seto in Let It Die (2016 video game).
Film: Donnie Darko (2001) as Samantha Darko, The Ring (2002) as Samara Morgan, Beethoven’s 5th (2003), S. Darko (2009), Jack Goes Home (2016).
Television: Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1998), Charmed, The Practice, ER, Big Love (2006 to 2011) as Rhonda Volmer, Mercy.
Awards: Annie Award for Outstanding Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production for Lilo and Stitch (2003), MTV Movie Award for Best Villain for The Ring (2003).
Related Articles:
