Former child star Danielle Spencer has died of cancer aged 60.
The American actress was best known for playing Dee Thomas in the sitcom What’s Happening!!, which ran from 1976 until 1979.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoing a double mastectomy in 2014, she then faced emergency surgery to relieve bleeding on her brain four years later.
It was announced this week that she had died in hospital in Richmond, Virginia, however a cause of death is yet to be shared.
‘Dr. Dee, our brilliant, loving, positive, pragmatic warrior, without fail, has finally found her release from the clutches of this world and a body. We celebrate Danielle Spencer and her contributions as we regret to inform her departure and transition from a long battle with cancer,’ her friend and former co-star Haywood Nelson wrote on Instagram.
‘We have lost a daughter, sister, family member, What’s Happening!! cast member, veterinarian, animal rights proponent and healer, and cancer heroine. Our Shero. Danielle is loved. She will be missed in this form and forever embraced.’
‘She suffered for a very long time but did it with a great deal of courage,’ he also told The Hollywood Reporter.
Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1965, Spencer began acting classes aged seven and was cast in What’s Happening!! four years later.
The show was loosely based on the film Cooley High and although it was originally only planned to air for one summer, it performed so well in its time slot a full season was greenlit.
However a year after the show began, the actress was involved in a shocking accident.
During the production of the season 2 episode Trial and Error in September 1977, Spencer and her stepfather Tim Pelt were involved in a severe car accident that left her in a coma for three weeks and caused his death.
Pelt’s fatal injuries were caused by trying to protect Spencer during the crash. She had no memories of the accident and spent six months recovering and undergoing physical therapy.
She later developed a spinal condition that left her paralysed from the waist down for months.
After the series was cancelled in 1979, Spencer and her mother temporarily relocated to Africa.
When they returned, she enrolled at the University of California-Davis, where she studied veterinary medicine.
However, after syndicated reruns of the 65 What’s Happening!! episodes rated well, a sequel series was ordered.
Titled What’s Happening Now!!, it saw Spencer return to screens as Dee while also balancing her college degree.
After the spin-off was cancelled in 1988, she then attended Tuskegee University Veterinary School in Tuskegee, Alabama, becoming a veterinarian in 1993.
Although she largely stepped away from show business, Spencer did play a vet in the 1997 film As Good as It Gets and appeared in Peter Rabbit and the Crucifix in 2001.
She also released a book about her life as a child star titled Through the Fire: Journal of a Child Star in 2011.
A few years later she spoke about finding fame so young as a Black woman.
‘I had never seen any young black girl in that type of spotlight, so I didn’t have a reference point in the media as to how to deal with this opportunity,’ she told Jet magazine in 2014. ‘I was from the Bronx. What I did was use my own family as the reference on how to portray my character.’
After working as a vet for two decades in the Los Angeles area, in 2014 Spencer moved to Richmond, Virginia, where she did a regular morning segment about pet care for CBS affiliate WTVR-TV.
That same year she was inducted into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
‘With everything that I’ve been through with the spinal cord injury, I said I know God is not going to give me another affliction…so I was completely shocked when the doctors told me,’ she said.
Spencer is survived by her mother and brother, Jeremy, a jazz musician.
Got a story?
If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.
