Daveigh Chase, star of The Ring and Lilo & Stitch, dies at 35

Daveigh Chase, the actress who played the ghost Samara in The Ring and voiced Lilo in Disney's Lilo & Stitch, died at 35.

Chase died from sepsis after a bout of meningitis in a Los Angeles hospital, her longtime manager John Ryan Jr told BBC News on Wednesday.

She began acting at age 4 and landed her first Hollywood job at 7. She retired from full-time acting in 2015, Ryan said.

"She was the greatest. She loved cats. She worked with cat rescues with us. She was very to herself," Ryan said. He noted that Chase often retreated to her home in Las Vegas for years at a time and turned down studio films to do independent projects.

"She was not very Hollywood," he said. "She'd rather eat at Bob's Big Boy and go home with the cats. She loved acting but wasn't into the fame scene."

Chase booked her first TV role at age 7 in a small part on the sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Her breakthrough came in 2001 when she appeared as Samantha Darko in Donnie Darko. She later played the title character's sister in the 2009 film S Darko.

In 2002 she played Samara Morgan, the long-haired ghost who crawls out of a television in The Ring, the American remake of the Japanese horror film. She won a 2003 MTV Movie Award for best villain for the role.

"It is not your typical character. Usually they are looking for a happy-go-lucky kid, but Samara was a pretty interesting character to play. I just kind of took my own voice and put this freaky twist on it," she told the Los Angeles Times in 2002.

That same year she voiced Lilo in the animated film Lilo & Stitch. The role earned her an Annie Award for best voice acting in an animated feature, and she continued voicing the character in later spin-offs.