A few years ago, Jennie Garth was feeling lost. Her three daughters were growing up \u2013 her eldest had already left home \u2013 and Garth was bored and unfulfilled. In March 2023, she noted in her diary that potential acting jobs were \u201cfew and far between, if at all really\u201d. She rarely heard from her agent, and she didn\u2019t want to get in touch with him \u201cjust to hear how different the business has become, how they just aren\u2019t looking for a woman my age, with my stereotyped abilities\u201d. As an actor, and one who had been particularly typecast, she was used to rejection, she wrote, \u201cbut this is getting a little scary\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the 90s, Garth had been a TV superstar. She was 18 when the teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 came out, in which she played Kelly Taylor \u2013 rich and spoilt on the surface, traumatised underneath. Although she continued to work after it came to an end in 2000, not least on the show\u2019s spin-offs, it must be hard to have hit your career high in your first job. More fulfilment came from other areas in Garth\u2019s life \u2013 she loved motherhood \u2013 although she found the end of her marriage to her daughters\u2019 father, the actor Peter Facinelli, so traumatic that she ended up in hospital after an accidental overdose and had a spell in rehab.<\/p>\n
Approaching 50, Garth had a vantage point on her life, and had that classic midlife thought: is this it? \u201cI was feeling stuck and I thought, how am I going to get out of this?\u201d she says. \u201cWhat do I do next, and how will I know what I\u2019m meant to do?\u201d There was also a new sense of urgency. Garth\u2019s 90210 co-star, and first love, Luke Perry, died in 2019, and Shannen Doherty, another co-star, had been diagnosed with breast cancer and died in 2024. \u201cThere\u2019s that sense of mortality. Having it happen around me made me feel like it was time to do what I know I\u2019m here to do,\u201d says Garth.<\/p>\n
Having had a lot of therapy, and read a lot of self-help books, she realised that perhaps her purpose lay in sharing what she\u2019d learned with other women experiencing a similar standstill. She launched a podcast, and now a book \u2013 part memoir, part self-help \u2013 both named I Choose Me. It\u2019s the line \u2013 iconic to those of us who watched 90210 \u2013 when Kelly has to choose between the show\u2019s two hunks, Brandon and Dylan, and she declares a third option: \u201cMe.\u201d It looked as if she was about to have a feminist awakening of self-discovery, but by the next episode she was still messing about with one of them. Still, we all do inadvisable things when we\u2019re young.<\/p>\n
Although she danced and sang as a child \u2013 she was discovered by a Hollywood manager at a beauty pageant her mother had entered her into \u2013 Garth never intended to become an actor. She grew up on a farm in Illinois, the youngest of seven, where her parents, both teachers, built their own house on their eight hectares (20 acres) of land. It was a childhood of animals, and riding her bike in the woods. \u201cI didn\u2019t know this world whatsoever when I entered into it,\u201d she says \u2013 we\u2019re on a video call, Garth in her podcast studio at home in Los Angeles. \u201cThat was like a crash course in survival, just seeing what was going on around me and trying to keep speed with that, but also be discerning about whether I wanted to be involved in certain things.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cast of Beverly Hills, 90210: Ian Ziering, Gabrielle Carteris, Brian Austin Green, Tori Spelling, Shannen Doherty, Jason Priestley, Jennie Garth and Luke Perry. Photograph: Mikel Roberts\/Sygma\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Beverly Hills, 90210 was the first massive teen drama hit and influential on every other one that followed. It made its stars, including Doherty, Perry and Jason Priestley, hugely famous. What does that do to someone that age? \u201cIt really does screw with your mind,\u201d says Garth, who is now 54. \u201cI felt like I spent a good 20 years of my life, the 10 of the show and the 10 after, just trying to keep my head above water.\u201d She thinks she avoided the worst of the effects \u2013 the partying, the wild times \u2013 by spending most weekends at the ranch she bought, two hours north of LA, which her parents moved to.<\/p>\n
But the experience of spending her formative years on a TV show was a weird way to grow up. \u201cI felt, developmentally, I was held back from the realities of the world,\u201d she says. \u201cEven though I was trying to have normal relationships and a normal life, I didn\u2019t know how.\u201d She watched other people leave school, go to college \u2013 slow steps towards independence. \u201cWhereas I was slammed into it at 18. I think famous people really don\u2019t realise the effect it has on them, because that becomes normal to them, but once you get to the other side, and maybe slow down a little, you realise: \u2018My young adulthood was not normal.\u2019 And then you start to ask questions: is what I didn\u2019t, or did, learn what caused those bumps in my life, five, 10 years later?\u201d<\/p>\n
It has felt like catching up, she says. \u201cI finally feel like I am my age now, as far as my ability to handle whatever comes my way, to not be so affected by everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a young actor, Garth wasn\u2019t ever \u201cin a position of grave concern\u201d, she says, but the sexism was unavoidable. \u201cGirls my age on every set in the 90s were exposed to far more than they should \u2013 more sexualisation, more discrimination.\u201d What did that look like? \u201cBoys being treated a different way than the girls on the show, different salaries. There were no expectations on the boys to be in a bathing suit, or look a certain way or always be perfect.\u201d Had she spoken up, she says, \u201cI can imagine I would have been labelled as something. Those weren\u2019t conversations that women were having yet, standing up for themselves and using their voice when they needed to.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were unspoken expectations. \u201cIf you wanted this job, you had to look a certain way, you had to maintain what was deemed sexy or cute or beautiful to whoever the men were that were hiring us,\u201d Garth says. She would starve herself, or take diet pills, and at 24, she had a breast enhancement. As a mother of young women now, she says, \u201cI think, \u2018Oh my God no, you absolutely are not getting a boob job at 24,\u2019 like, let\u2019s talk about why you want it, dig into those feelings of inadequacy, and explore it more.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s obvious why she felt like that as a young actor. \u201cYou are judged constantly. You\u2019re selected or not, and it\u2019s hard to not take things personally. You have to be able to think: what are your real, true priorities in life? I did not know I needed to do that. I just felt there\u2019s something wrong with me, or I\u2019m not good enough.\u201d The pressure, she says, in her mind became all about competition. \u201cYou have to fight to get the prize \u2013 and a lot of times back then, the prize was attention from men, acceptance from men and a job from men.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Simon Rex in What I Like About You. Photograph: Warner Bros Tv\/Allstar<\/p>\n
One of the negative impacts, when she saw everyone as competition, was on her ability to form female friendships. The show, and then the media, pitted Garth and Doherty\u2019s characters against each other, which started blurring into real-life drama. \u201cIn me, it affected that need to fight harder. I think any two women in that position could probably share the same story back then, when there were no conversations about sisterhood. Really sitting down and talking to each other, like, \u2018Can you believe all this BS? I like you, you like me. It\u2019s so weird that it\u2019s changing our relationship, but let\u2019s not let that happen.\u2019 But we were just young, and we didn\u2019t have those words.\u201d Later, they did become friends, \u201coutside of all that ridiculousness\u201d.<\/p>\n
Garth has worked solidly \u2013 she spent four years in the sitcom What I Like About You, made TV movies, did a reality show and has done several 90210 spin-offs \u2013 but she writes about feeling like an outsider in Hollywood, despite, or rather because of, her early success. \u201cWe were so beloved by our audience, but in the industry we were kind of overlooked. I think there was some incredible work done by many of the actors, heavy storylines, but I think we fell into a sort of Aaron Spelling-night-time-soapy category and I don\u2019t think people within the industry were that open for us to grow into what could be next. It\u2019s kept me feeling like there\u2019s Hollywood and then there\u2019s my career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tori Spelling, Jennie Garth, Gabrielle Carteris and Shannen Doherty of Beverly Hills, 90210. Photograph: Aaron Rapoport\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Then Garth switches into self-coaching mode. \u201cBut I can see feeling separate is probably just my feelings.\u201d At industry events, she says, \u201cI have to actually remind myself, \u2018I deserve to be here. I am just like that person and that person, and this is my industry, these are my peers.\u2019 I have to really talk myself into feeling comfortable.\u201d But she\u2019s also reached a point where she wants to be more choosy. \u201cI think a lot of [career success] comes down to opportunities for the right projects that will carry you into something next. That\u2019s why I\u2019ve really put the brakes on doing acting that doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s going to take me somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garth recently talked on her podcast about auditioning for the hit TV series White Lotus, exactly the kind of show that takes its cast onwards and upwards. For actors, especially, it must be hard to have other people\u2019s successes in your face \u2013 literal billboards, sometimes. The job that went to someone else that then won them an Oscar; someone\u2019s endless blockbusters, or highbrow releases. How does she deal with that? \u201cIt\u2019s not easy,\u201d says Garth. \u201cYou fall into that compare\/despair mentality.\u201d She smiles. \u201cI can dip right back into it at any moment. My brain is hardwired to feel, \u2018Why didn\u2019t I get that role? I must not be good enough.\u2019 I think that\u2019s universal for a lot of humans out there, whether it\u2019s a job they didn\u2019t get, or relationship that didn\u2019t work out, a multitude of things. We believe those negative messages in our brains, and I\u2019ve had to learn how to untangle them, acknowledge that they\u2019re there, but I have to control them, because nobody else is going to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019ve put the brakes on doing acting that doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s going to take me somewhere.\u2019 Photograph: Maria Spann\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Garth shares many of her lessons \u2013 on gaining validation from within, on dealing with uncertainty, overthinking and impostor syndrome \u2013 in her book. They\u2019re not necessarily revelatory if, like me, you\u2019ve spent far too long reading self-help; but framed in Garth\u2019s warm way, they\u2019re all good reminders. It\u2019s helpful to see, by her account, that it\u2019s never too late \u2013 her 50s, she decided, were a time not to slow down but to speed up.<\/p>\n
Life looks very different now from 2012, when her 11-year marriage to Facinelli ended. (She had previously been married, to the musician Daniel B Clark, from 1994 to 1996.) On the day she ended up in hospital having her stomach pumped, she and Facinelli had been in Phoenix, Arizona, seeing a couples therapist \u2013 she thought they were there to save their marriage, but soon concluded that her husband was there to end it. She walked out, checked into her hotel room, raided the minibar, swallowed a load of anxiety pills, then made a worrying phone call to a friend. Garth\u2019s assistant immediately flew out to Arizona, gained access to her room and found Garth unconscious on the floor.<\/p>\n
After she was discharged from hospital, Garth entered rehab (she had been self-medicating with alcohol for months), then did several weeks of intense therapy. \u201cI wasn\u2019t at a place in my life where I had the kind of mind control that I do now, or the kind of knowledge of how to survive deep pain like that, so I made some unhealthy decisions and things I regret.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, she says she felt ashamed \u2013 especially of how it affected her daughters \u2013 but not now. \u201cI don\u2019t carry that shame around. And also, nobody\u2019s looking at me and shaming me, not my children, not my husband, not my friends, and that\u2019s all that really matters to me. You have to forgive yourself and realise that we all make mistakes, we all have to learn the tough lessons one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n
It took Garth almost a decade to fully recover from the end of her marriage to Facinelli. She laughs now. \u201cLike, when is this going to go away? It would affect all the parts of my life, these feelings of being unwanted or having not been enough for someone, or feelings of failure \u2013 I\u2019ve failed my children, I\u2019ve ruined their lives.\u201d She describes her decision to let go of her hurt and anger as like flicking a switch. \u201cI just reached a point where I thought: I don\u2019t want to live my life like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Life got better, though not, of course, in a fairytale way. She met her third husband, the actor David Abrams, and they seem happy, although they separated for a year early in their relationship amid the pain of failed IVF and miscarriages. During that time, she did more therapy, took trips, embraced Buddhism. \u201cI was on a bender to find happiness and joy within myself, and so everything I could read, everything I could do, all kinds of different therapies. Healers, even though that sounds crazy, just trying it and not expecting anything, but seeing what that opened up in me.\u201d She laughs. It has brought her to some strange places. This sounds, she acknowledges, \u201cvery LA woo-woo, but I believe in angels. I really do believe that there are spirits or energies that are guiding us and supporting us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even just saying it out loud is part of no longer caring what other people think as much, she says. \u201cThis is my life. I\u2019m going to believe what I want to believe in. It\u2019s working for me.\u201d The benefit of being older, she says, is that, \u201cyou lose that need to be liked, that need to please people around you all the time, and there\u2019s something so freeing in that.\u201d She remembers that at one particularly low point her sister, trying to psych her up, told her, \u201cYou\u2019re Jennie fucking Garth!\u201d She laughs. \u201cI was, like, oh God, don\u2019t say that. It felt like a weird fame thing, but I say that to [non-famous] people now, just to remind them you are who you are, with so much beauty and power and uniqueness in that.\u201d<\/p>\n