“Beverly Hills, 90210” made Jason Priestley a teen idol. The show was constant drama — virginities were lost, drugs were consumed, and shots were fired (literally). Not unlike his character, Priestley needs a sappy Chris Isaak song overlaid on many parts of his life. His biggest real-life plot twist? When the actor narrowly made it out alive in a serious car accident.

Advertisement

Aside from acting, Priestley was passionate about professional race car driving. He seriously began pursuing a racing career in 1991 in the California Rally Series. Priestley made his first victory in the Motorola Cup North American Street Stock Championship in 1998. The years that followed brought more successful outcomes, until 2002 — two years after wrapping “90210.”

While practicing at the Kentucky Auto Racing Speedway on August 11, 2002, Priestley crashed head-on into a wall after driving through oil-dry, a car oil absorbent that he was warned to avoid, per The Washington Post. He went from 180 mph to zero in a split second. Priestley had some serious injuries, including a broken back and trauma to the head. According to ABC News, who spoke with Priestley in 2003, he was nearly unrecognizable due to his facial injuries. He told ABC News that “it was really quite shocking” when he woke up a day later, not knowing what happened. He mentioned his fear of never being able to walk again, citing Christopher Reeve and former IndyCar driver Sam Schmidt, saying, “I was really, really terrified that that was gonna be me.”

Advertisement

His traumatic accident was one of the many tragic details that plagued the “90210” cast. Priestly revealed the gruesome details of reconstructing his body after the crash to CNN’s Piers Morgan in 2011. “I broke my spine and I shattered both my feet,” he said. “I did a lot of damage to my face, too. I ripped my nose off my face, I broke my orbital bone, my cheekbone, and my ocular mantle.” He even confessed that the doctors removed his eyeball in order to restore a part of his skull. Luckily for the actor, his face healed back to its original heartthrob state. Priestley was eventually able to get behind the wheel again — this time just for fun.

Advertisement

Priestley’s “90210” co-star, Shannen Doherty, speculated that there was more damage to him than severely broken bones. After 2014’s “Jason Preistley: A Memoir” exposed Doherty’s alleged diva behavior, the late “Charmed” actor told SiriusXM’s “Just Jenny” host Jenny Hunt in 2015 that Priestley may be remembering the details wrong because of his car accident. “I love Jason but you know he had a car accident, a racing accident, and I think maybe parts of his memory got altered from that,” she said. “Because everybody changes — they have their own perception of the truth. And his is definitely different than mine.”