Luke Perry‘s last role may have been as a dad on TV’s “Riverdale,” but the actor, who died Monday at 52, really made his name years earlier as a bad-boy heartthrob on “Beverly Hills, 90210.”
Perry will likely be best remembered for portraying Dylan McKay, a brooding millionaire’s son, on the classic teen soap from 1990 to 1995 and then 1998 to 2000.
The role cemented him as one of the definitive TV stars of the era and a teen idol.
“I’m going to be linked with him until I die, but that’s actually just fine. I created Dylan McKay. He’s mine,” the actor once said about the career-defining role.
But he also made his mark in Joss Whedon’s 1992 “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” movie as Oliver Pike, the slacker love interest to the monster-slaying teen Buffy. The film served as the basis for the hit ’90s TV series by the same name.
After some voice-acting — as himself — on TV’s “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy,” Perry moved to cable, with a role on HBO’s prison drama “Oz.” From 2001 to 2002, he portrayed the Rev. Jeremiah Cloutier, who ends up in prison for embezzling funds from his church and tries to convert other inmates to Christianity.
Though some of his “90210” co-stars reprised their roles in the 2008 CW reboot of the series, Perry refused.
He finally returned to TV in 2015 in a Canadian-American drama on the Up Network called “Ties That Bind.”
From 2017 until his death, he starred as Frederick “Fred” Andrews, Archie’s father on the CW drama “Riverdale,” based on the comic.