Luke Perry

Luke Perry married model Rachel Minnie Sharp in 1993. She gave birth to their son Jack on June 15, 1997 and daughter Sophie on June 7, 2000. After their divorce in 2003, they agreed to share the custody of their children.

In 2015, following a colonoscopy, Perry was told that he had precancerous growths in his colon. Later he underwent surgery to remove the growths. He has since collaborated with the advocacy group Fight Colorectal Cancer and its national campaign Strong Arm Selfie to raise awareness about one of the most lethal forms of cancers and encourage others to get screened.

Luke Perry was born on October 11, 1966, in Mansfield, Ohio to parents Ann Bennett and Coy Luther Perry Jr. His father was a steelworker while his mother took care of their home and children. He has a brother, Thomas, and two sisters, Amy and Emily.

Raised in Fredericktown, a village in Ohio, he studied at Fredericktown High School where he was the school’s mascot, Freddie. He was also a member of its baseball team though he was an inattentive student when it came to academics. Every year, he goes back home for the Fredericktown Tomato Show, which is an annual street fair.

Graduating in 1984, Luke Perry travelled to Los Angeles to start his career as an actor. He worked in construction as a paver and in other capacities which helped him to pay off the fees for the acting classes. He also spent considerable time in other cities such as Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Downey, and Paramount.

He played an uncredited role in the series ‘Voyagers’, following which he couldn’t find work on any other project until 1987, when he landed the part of Ned Bates in ABC’s soap opera ‘Loving’. A year later, he was cast in another soap opera, NBC’s ‘Another World’.

His role in ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ made Perry a teenage heartthrob in the 1990s and the offers began to pour in. Besides the ensemble drama ‘Scorchers’ (1991), he appeared in his first leading role in a film in ‘Terminal Bliss’ (1992).

Later, he appeared as Oliver Pike in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, a comedy-horror based on Joss Whedon’s script. He co-starred with Kristy Swanson in the film. Whedon would later develop a darker and critically acclaimed television series of the same name.

While most of his significant works are on television, Perry has, over the years, built up an impressive filmography. He played Lane Frost in ‘8 Seconds’ (1994), Mark Pinnalore in ‘Attention Shoppers’ (2000), and Richard Steele in ‘Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise.’

Luke Perry is best known for portraying the role of Dylan in ‘Beverly Hills, 90210.’ There is only a handful of television shows that have been as influential in their respective genres as ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ had been among teen dramas. Originally aired from 1990 to 2000, the series can very well be seen as the perfect documentation of the 1990s, and the fashion and lifestyle that were prevalent in that decade.

His character Dylan McKay was a dark, brooding son of a millionaire. He was virtually a lone wolf, who, in the course of the series, grows close to the other main characters. Perry left the show in 1995 to pursue more mature roles but returned in 1998 for financial reasons. He received a People’s Choice Award nomination and a Kids’ Choice Award nomination for his performance.

Perry declined the offer to be part of the 2008 revival, ‘90210’, primarily due to his sense of loyalty towards Aaron Spelling, one of the creators of the original series, who also wasn’t part of the revival. However, he maintains that he feels possessive of the character, stating that, "I'm going to be linked with him until I die, but that's actually just fine. I created Dylan McKay. He's mine."