Actor and singer Ashley Hamilton, the former husband of the late Shannen Doherty, landed in the hospital last Thursday after an apparent overdose. The 51-year-old, son of actor George Hamilton and model Alana Stewart, remains in stable condition and is recovering.
Emergency responders found Hamilton suffering from a health crisis tied to an unidentified substance at an Airbnb property in the Los Angeles area. He also shares a nine-year-old daughter with ex-girlfriend Renee Karelian.
Addiction Struggles and Early Life
Hamilton has openly discussed his long battle with addiction, which started in his teenage years amid anorexia and bulimia. He revealed using drugs and alcohol to manage those conditions. By age 22, he had faced half a dozen arrests and completed 32 rehab programs.
In a recent interview, Hamilton detailed his hardships: “Two failed marriages, two failed careers, 32 rehabs, five overdoses, three flatlines, two comas, left side of my body paralyzed, brain surgery, spleen surgery, staph infection in the heart, gangrene of the arms, shootouts from drug deals gone bad, and half a dozen arrests—all by the age of 22.”
His father, George Hamilton, grew emotional on their family’s reality show, telling him, “I am very proud of you. There are about four times that we almost lost you in your life.” Hamilton responded in a confessional: “I went through a hard time with drugs and alcohol; it was so stupid. I blew everything, but I have a second chance, and I am going to give it everything I have got.”
Hamilton was also Rod Stewart’s stepson during part of his childhood from 1979 to 1984.
Brief Marriage to Shannen Doherty
Hamilton married Shannen Doherty in 1993 after just two weeks of dating—he was 19, she was 22. The union ended five months later in 1994. Doherty, then starring on Beverly Hills, 90210, later described the marriage on her podcast Let’s Be Clear with castmate Jason Priestley.
“I was in a really horrible marriage, and there were things that were transpiring in that marriage that made it really hard for me to be on time for work,” she said. She explained fearing to leave the house lest he buy drugs, leading to set tardiness: “It became a very big problem for the rest of you, as it should be. It wasn’t anybody’s responsibility but mine, but I sort of wish I would have been sat down and looked at and said: ‘Listen, the end result is going to be this—you are going to get fired, and none of us are willing to put up with it anymore.'”
He followed with a short marriage to Playboy model Angie Everhart.
Recent Health Challenges and Legal Issues
In August 2024, authorities arrested Hamilton for allegedly brandishing a pocket knife at a Beverly Hills hotel employee who asked him to leave after finding him asleep on a lobby sofa around 5 a.m.
Last year, he disclosed battling a rare mucosal HPV-related cancer on the Punk Rock Sober podcast. In a follow-up interview three weeks ago alongside a death doula, he discussed his ongoing fight, noting his daughter remains unaware of the illness.
Hamilton shared that he submitted paperwork to a Swiss clinic for assisted suicide: “What I don’t wanna do is I don’t wanna die in a motel with a f***in’ needle in my neck and leave that stain on my daughter and leave my stain on people around me. That I don’t wanna do. As easy as that would be for me to do, I don’t wanna do that to people.”
