Daveigh Chase spent her career building characters that stuck with audiences long after the credits rolled, and years before her death, she explained in her own words why that mattered so much to her.
In a 2009 interview with Interview magazine, Chase said her goal was to create work she loved that people would respect, adding that she wanted to do things that would change someone's life rather than be forgotten by the next day.
Her own path into acting started almost by accident. A car accident involving her mother in 1998 left the family stranded in Los Angeles longer than planned, and an 8-year-old Chase used the unexpected delay to start auditioning instead of returning home to Oregon.
That detour led to one of the more varied careers of her generation. She voiced the title role in Disney's "Lilo & Stitch," lent her voice to Chihiro in the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away," and played the haunting Samara Morgan opposite Naomi Watts in "The Ring."
Her credits also included "Donnie Darko," HBO's "Big Love," and roles spanning nearly two decades of film and television.
Chase died Tuesday at age 35. In the days since, fans have returned to her old social media posts with tributes, many echoing Lilo's familiar message that family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten, alongside notes of blessing for her memory.
For an actress who once said she hoped to leave something people wouldn't forget, the outpouring suggests she succeeded.
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