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Luke Perry, Riverdale Star and LGBTQ Ally, Has Died at 52
Luke Perry, Riverdale Star and LGBTQ Ally, Has Died at 52
The Beverly Hills, 90210 star who appeared at GLAAD recently in honor of his decades-long friendship with Alexis Arquette, had suffered a stroke.
Star of the original Beverly Hills, 90210 and Riverdale and LGBTQ ally Luke Perry died Monday at 52 following a massive stroke last week, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"He was surrounded by his children Jack and Sophie, fiance Wendy Madison Bauer, ex-wife Minnie Sharp, mother Ann Bennett, step-father Steve Bennett, brother Tom Perry, sister Amy Coder, and other close family and friends," Perry's representative Arnold Robinson told THR."The family appreciates the outpouring of support and prayers that have been extended to Luke from around the world, and respectfully request privacy in this time of great mourning. No further details will be released at this time."
Perry became a teen heartthrob in the early '90s for his role of Dylan McKay on the original 90210. He also appeared in the 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie and in the HBO series Oz, to name a few. For the past several years, he played Archie Andrews's father, Fred Andrews, on Riverdale, the CW's LGBTQ-inclusive noir take on the Archie comics.
In 2017, a tearful Perry appeared at the GLAAD Awards to help honor Patricia Arquette, who received the Vanguard Award for her LGBTQ activism, especially in relation to her support of her transgender sister, Alexis Arquette, who was 47 when she died in 2016. Perry and Arquette had been friends for 30 years, and the Riverdale actor spoke ardently about their friendship.
"Look when you love somebody, you love them. Bottom line," Perry told ET at the time about his friendship with Alexis Arquette. "And I loved Lex and Lex loved me, and I don't need to explain that to anybody. That's how love works, and that's what's so special about the message Patricia spreads."
"When you can get that love out there and bring that love into your workplace, and you can hire them and look past all that stuff and get to the person that's inside, that's what Alexis was about," Perry continued. "That opened that whole entire part of my life up -- to be able to see the world like that. So I owe a huge debt of gratitude and an awful lot of love."
