After splitting from her husband, Dave Abrams, in August 2017, Jennie Garth hit a low point.
In her new memoir, “I Choose Me: Chasing Joy, Finding Purpose & Embracing Reinvention,” the “Beverly Hills, 90210,” star, 54, reveals that she descended into “old patterns” of drinking and depression as her marriage fell apart.
One night, her eldest daughter, Luca, now 28, found her slashing herself with shards of glass from a framed photo of her and Abrams.
“I was in my room smashing framed pictures of me and Dave, overcome by the pain,” Garth writes.
Jennie Garth says she retreated to “old patterns” of drinking and depression when her third husband, Dave Abrams, left her. Getty Images
Garth and her daughters, Luca, Fiona and Lola. Jennie Garth/ Instagram
“I was taking the broken glass from the picture frames and I was trying to cut myself with the jagged pieces. I was certainly not in my right mind,” she adds. “It was almost an unconscious act, a form of punishment.”
Garth, who rose to fame as Kelly Taylor in the ’90s TV phenomenon, wed Abrams, who is nine years her junior, in an intimate California ranch wedding in 2015. But, their relationship was torn apart after she suffered four miscarriages and underwent grueling IVF treatment.
The “Beverly Hills 90210” star was left devastated when her second husband, “Twilight” actor Peter Facinelli, the father of her three daughters, asked for a divorce in 2012. Getty Images
Garth and Facinelli — seen at Disneyland in California in December 2010 with their daughters — were married for 11 years. Getty Images
“Dave said he just had to get out of there, and so he did,” she writes.
On the dark night Luca found her cutting herself, she helped her pick up the pieces.
“She took the glass from me, and cleaned up, while I buried myself in my bed, covering up with blankets of shame. The next morning, I woke up and my self-hatred was at an all-time high. I was being so selfish and self-indulgent, and now I was terrified that I had caused irreparable damage to my relationship with my daughter,” she writes. “I was hurting my daughter by letting her see me like that. This was one of those regrets in life that stay with you forever. Luca said, ‘You can’t go on like this Mom. We need you.’”
Garth (bottom center) found fame in her teens on “Beverly Hills, 90210” as spoiled Kelly Taylor. Her co-stars include Jason Priestley (clockwise from bottom left), Gabrielle Carteris, Ian Ziering, Tori Spelling, James Eckhouse, Carol Potter, Brian Austin Green, Shannen Doherty and Luke Perry ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
Luca is one of three daughters Garth shares with her second husband, actor Peter Facinelli, who left her devastated by asking for a divorce in 2012. Her first marriage was short-lived: She wed musician Daniel B. Clark, in 1994 at age 22. They divorced two years later.
She and Abrams eventually reunited in 2019 after spending a few days together at a retreat in Joshua Tree, where he told her, “You’re my person.” They remain together today, but, she reveals in the book, he kept the manilla envelope containing their divorce papers in his truck “for quite a few years”.
“I think it represented something profoundly freeing to him: He has a choice. To be together or to split. He can sign those papers anytime he wants. We all have free will,” she writes.
Garth reunited with her castmates — Luke Perry, Tori Spelling and Jason Priestley — at the 2005 TV Land Awards. Getty Images
The actress was thrust into the spotlight at a young age. As a teen pageant girl in her native Illinois, she was spotted by a showbiz agent named Randy James. By age 17, she was living by herself in LA.
At 18, she was diagnosed with clinical depression and started taking Prozac. “For a long time, I thought needing help — needing medication — made me less than. It felt shameful to be on that kind of medicine as a young woman who seemed to be living the dream,” she writes of being on antidepressants.
“I carried the weight of feeling weak and somehow damaged through years of trying different medications. I tried them all, chasing balance and battling the belief that I shouldn’t have to. What I see now is that the real strength was in refusing to give up on myself.”
Garth ran to the hospital to be with Perry after he suffered a major stroke in March 2019, but she was not allowed to see him. ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
She also struggled with disordered eating and dysmorphia. “It wasn’t until I came to Hollywood that I truly began to feel the weight of being looked at. There, your appearance becomes your currency,” she writes. “Whether it was restriction, binging, purging, or even using diet pills to curb my appetite — it was always something. Just like good old Kelly Taylor.”
Her personal struggles led her to explore Buddhism and meditation. She now hosts the self-help and empowerment podcast “I Choose Me.” Both it and the new book are named after the famous moment in “90210” when her character chose herself over her dueling love interests, Dylan McKay, played by Luke Perry, and Brandon Walsh, played by Jason Priestley.
In real life, Garth considers Perry to be one of her first real loves. Losing him was crushing. His longtime manager Steve Himber called her in February 2019 and told her Perry had suffered a sudden, unexpected stroke.
The actress has laid bare all of her emotional past in her new book, “I Choose Me.”
“I felt an immediate urge to go to him,” she writes. She rushed to Saint Joseph’s hospital in Burbank, but was not allowed to see him.
A few days later, Himber called to say Perry had died. He was just 52.
Gabrielle Carteris, who played Andrea Zuckerman on “90210,” held a memorial at her house, attended by Perry’s kids, Sophie and Jack, and his wife, Minnie.
Garth said she suffered four miscarriages after marrying Abrams in 2015, which led to their split. They reunited in 2019. Getty Images for Ferrero
“She held me so tightly, no words needed between two once young women who had loved the same man in very different ways,” Garth writes of their shared grief.
Her best friend, Tori Spelling, “was the only one who really knew my true feelings for Luke”, Garth writes. “And while her heart was shattered, too, she knew I was struggling. Because of my complicated feelings, it was difficult to know my place in all the grief. I don’t think anyone really understood our relationship, myself included. It was too painful, so I just put it in a box and buried it somewhere deep inside me. I’ve never opened it and I never intend to.”
The “90210” cast reunited for a brief six-episode show in August 2019. Shannen Doherty, with whom Garth had a contentious friendship, seemed “a little removed and preoccupied during the filming”, and only later did Garth learn that her co-star’s cancer had returned.
Garth went through years of therapy and studied Buddhism after being diagnosed with clinical depression when she was 18. GC Images
Doherty died at age 53 in July 2024.
“There was a very dark feeling in the pit of my stomach as I heard over and over the public’s uneducated commentary that she and I were never friends,” Garth writes. “That was not true, and it stabbed at me, as if my feelings and loss were being denied or wrongly felt somehow. I knew our relationship and I knew the truth. We had moved on from the pettier disagreements of our youth and we had forged a new, mature friendship in adulthood … I miss her. I always will.”
The ‘90210’ castmates — including Ian Ziering (from left), Garth, Tori Spelling, Brian Austin Green, Shannen Doherty, Gabriel Carteris and Jason Priestley — reunited for a short-lived series in 2019.
Decades after the show ended, she still feels a unique bond with all of her “90210” co-stars
“We had all gone through so much together, both on and off the set, and while the show itself may have ended sooner than we had hoped, the bond between us remained,” she writes. “The shared history, the laughter, the conflicts, and the triumphs, all woven together over time, created something unbreakable. We may not have known it at the time, but these friendships — complicated, layered, and sometimes difficult — would last a lifetime.”