Credit: DisneyThere are actors who leave a mark on a character so complete that the two become inseparable in the minds of the people who grew up with them. Daveigh Chase was one of those actors. She brought Lilo Pelekai to life in a way that felt genuine and specific, a child who was grieving, eccentric, determined, and deeply loving all at once. For a generation of audiences, she was Lilo. That is the kind of work that outlasts any single performance.
Chase passed away this week from septic shock and organ failure at 35 years old. She had been taken to a hospital for meningitis and bloodstream infections. Her death is a devastating loss for everyone who cared about her work, and the response from the people who knew her best has reflected exactly that.
Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, the directors of the original Lilo & Stitch, posted a tribute to Chase on Instagram. The image they shared showed Stitch sitting on a rock, holding a sandwich and a doll, wiping tears from his face while looking at a fish in the water. No words were needed. The image said everything about grief and memory and the specific tenderness that defined that film.
It is the kind of tribute that hurts to look at and somehow feels exactly right.
Who Daveigh Chase Was
As stated by Daily Breifs on X, “💔Daveigh Chase Dies at 35
#DaveighChase, voice of Lilo in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch & Samara in The Ring , has died in Los Angeles
Reports say meningitis led to sepsis
She also appeared in Donnie Darko, HBO’s Big Love, & voiced Chihiro in Spirited Away🕊️”
💔Daveigh Chase Dies at 35#DaveighChase, voice of Lilo in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch & Samara in The Ring , has died in Los Angeles
Reports say meningitis led to sepsis
She also appeared in Donnie Darko, HBO’s Big Love, & voiced Chihiro in Spirited Away🕊️#RIP #ぐるナイ #ฟารีดา pic.twitter.com/FqFwVyiwkm
— Daily Briefs (@Daily_Briefs_) June 18, 2026
In Lilo & Stitch, she voiced Lilo Pelekai, the young Hawaiian girl at the center of the story. Lilo & Stitch follows Lilo and her older sister Nani as they try to build a life together after losing their parents. When Lilo adopts what she believes is a dog from an animal shelter, she names him Stitch and begins forming the kind of bond that gives the film its emotional core. Stitch is not a dog. He is Experiment 626, a creation of rogue alien scientist Jumba Jookiba, engineered to cause destruction wherever he goes. But the story of what happens when this creature encounters unconditional love is what made the film resonate with audiences well beyond its original release.
The film has its own origin story worth knowing. Sanders had been developing the character as part of a children’s book idea since 1981. That project never found its way to publication. Years later, when Walt Disney Feature Animation was actively looking for new stories, the idea was revived. In 1997, studio president Thomas Schumacher asked Sanders to develop the character into an animated feature. Lilo & Stitch debuted in theaters in 2002.
In that same year, Chase appeared in a film of an entirely different nature. In The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s American remake of the Japanese horror classic Ringu, Chase played Samara Morgan, the terrifying young girl whose spirit manifested through a cursed videotape. Anyone who watched the tape received a phone call telling them they would die in seven days. The only escape was to copy the tape and show it to someone else.
The Ring was itself an adaptation of Ringu, which was based on the novel Ring by Koji Suzuki. The American version starred Naomi Watts as Rachel Keller, David Dorfman as Aiden Keller, Martin Henderson as Noah Clay, Amber Tamblyn as Katie Embry, and Rachael Bella as Becca Kotler, alongside Chase. Chase’s performance as Samara became one of the defining horror images of the early 2000s, a presence so unsettling that it lodged in the cultural imagination and stayed there.
Two iconic performances in two genres that have almost nothing in common. That is not a coincidence. That is range.
The Tribute and What It Means
Sanders and DeBlois choosing to share an image of Stitch grieving rather than writing a long statement was the right instinct. Lilo & Stitch was always a film about love that persists through loss, about families that hold together even when everything is working against them, about being found by the right person or creature at exactly the right moment. The image they chose captures all of that without requiring an explanation.
Stitch wiping tears from his face while sitting alone is not just an image of a cartoon character being sad. It is Stitch, who was built to destroy and instead learned to love, experiencing loss. For anyone who watched that film and understood what it was saying, the tribute lands with real weight.
Chase gave that character her voice and her emotional authenticity. The performance that made Stitch’s journey matter was, in large part, hers.
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For guests visiting Disney parks with younger children who are discovering Lilo & Stitch for the first time through the live-action remake, or for adults returning to the story for the first time in years, the original film remains available to watch and worth returning to. Chase’s performance as Lilo is a specific and irreplaceable part of what made that movie matter.
She was 35 years old. She was enormously talented. And she is gone far too soon.
If you want to share a memory of Daveigh Chase’s work, whether it is Lilo & Stitch, The Ring, or anything else she appeared in, leave a comment below. This is one of those moments where it feels right to just say something.
