In his heyday, Luke Perry made girls faint. His fame consistently surprised him.

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By Elizabeth Chuck

Luke Perry once had to be smuggled out of a Seattle mall hidden under clothes inside a laundry hamper to escape the throngs of teenage girls who had mobbed him during an autograph-signing event.

Another time, in Denver, the mere sight of him prompted a fan to pass out.

“She fainted right in front of me. And I was going, ‘Hey, hey, breathe, hey, hey,’” Perry told Rolling Stone magazine in 1992.

“I don’t like that. I mean, I could understand if I was the King,” he added, referring to Elvis Presley. “But I ain’t.”

As the actor who played brooding bad boy Dylan McKay on the 1990s hit show “Beverly Hills, 90210,” Perry vaulted to fame, becoming the heartthrob of a generation. It was a position he never quite seemed comfortable in.

The actor, who died Monday at age 52 from a stroke, came from modest roots. Raised in rural Fredericktown, Ohio, he didn’t start acting until after high school, and told NBC’s “Today” Show in 1992 that stardom felt foreign to him.

source: nbcnews.com