Honestly, it’s impossible to talk about 90s pop culture without hitting the Tori Spelling wall. For a lot of us, she was just Donna Martin. The girl who wasn't allowed to graduate. The virgin of Beverly Hills. But if you actually look at the Tori Spelling movies and TV shows catalog, it’s way weirder and more prolific than just one zip code.
She has been on our screens for over forty years. Think about that. Most child stars burn out by twenty, but Tori basically invented the "second act" through sheer willpower and a lot of Lifetime movies. From her early days as a guest star on her dad's shows to becoming the queen of campy thrillers, her filmography is a chaotic, fascinating map of Hollywood survival.
The Donna Martin Era and the 90210 Legacy
Let's be real: Beverly Hills, 90210 is the anchor. Everything else in her career orbits this show. Cast at sixteen, Tori played Donna Martin for ten years. That is 292 episodes of high-waisted jeans and prom drama.
Most people don't realize she was actually a pretty gifted physical comedian. While the show was busy being a "serious" teen drama, Donna was often the one getting into goofy scrapes. She reprised the role in the 2009 CW reboot and then again in the meta-masterpiece BH90210 in 2019, where the cast played heightened versions of themselves. It was weird, it was short-lived, but it showed she has a sense of humor about her own image.
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Those Iconic (and Ridiculous) Lifetime Movies
If you haven’t stayed up until 2:00 AM watching a Tori Spelling TV movie, have you even lived? This is where she really built her "TV Movie Queen" brand.
- A Friend to Die For (1994): Also known as Death of a Cheerleader. This is arguably her best dramatic work. She played the "perfect" Stacy Lockwood, and it’s actually a chilling look at high school social hierarchies.
- Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? (1996): The title alone is legendary. It’s the ultimate 90s thriller. Fast forward to 2016, and she did a remake with James Franco that turned the whole thing into a lesbian vampire movie. It’s exactly as bonkers as it sounds.
- Co-ed Call Girl (1996): Another classic "good girl gone bad" trope. It’s formulaic, sure, but she sells the melodrama like no one else.
The Shift to Reality TV and Modern Projects
Somewhere in the mid-2000s, the "Tori Spelling movies and TV shows" list shifted from scripted drama to "unscripted" chaos.
Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood ran for six seasons. It was one of the first reality shows to really lean into the "celebrity struggle" narrative. We saw the house hunting, the kids, the financial stress—everything. It was messy. It was polarizing. But it kept her relevant when the movie roles slowed down.
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Lately, she’s been everywhere in the reality competition world. She was the Unicorn on The Masked Singer (2019) and competed on Dancing with the Stars Season 33 in late 2024. Even in 2025 and early 2026, she’s been making headlines for her podcast, misSPELLING, where she’s been brutally honest about her divorce from Dean McDermott and the realities of being a single mom to five kids.
Is Any of it Actually "Good"?
Nuance is key here. If you’re looking for Oscar-winning cinema, you’re in the wrong place. But if you want entertainment that understands exactly what it is, Tori delivers. The House of Yes (1997) and Trick (1999) are actually great indie films that show she has range outside of the "Spelling Manor" bubble.
She’s often criticized for being "famous for being famous," but that’s a bit of a lazy take. You don't stay in this business for four decades just by having a famous last name. You do it by saying "yes" to The Last Sharknado and showing up for fan conventions like Planet Comicon 2025 to talk about a show that ended 25 years ago.
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Your Tori Spelling Watchlist
If you want to understand the trajectory, here is the order you should watch:
- The Essentials: Beverly Hills, 90210 (Season 1-3 for the vibes, Season 7 for the Donna/David payoff).
- The Thriller: A Friend to Die For. It’s genuinely better than you remember.
- The Indie Credit: Trick. She plays the best friend, Katherine, and she’s hilarious.
- The Meta-Comedy: So NoTORIous. This was a 2006 VH1 sitcom where she poked fun at her own life. It was ahead of its time.
- The Modern Era: Check out her recent podcast episodes for the unfiltered version of her story.
Tori Spelling has spent her life being a character, whether she's scripted or not. She’s a survivor of an era of Hollywood that doesn't really exist anymore, and that makes her filmography more interesting than most people give her credit for.
Your Next Step: If you’re feeling nostalgic, start with the 9021OMG podcast. Hearing Tori and Jennie Garth break down the old episodes gives a lot of context to how those early TV shows were actually made behind the scenes.