Sheridan Crane


Sheridan Crane is a fictional character on the NBC/DirecTV soap opera Passions. She has been portrayed by McKenzie Westmore since the series began in 1999, and was briefly portrayed by Shannon Sturges when Westmore was out sick in 2005 and by Kam Heskin in 2006 when Westmore was out on maternity leave and again in 2008 while Westmore was out sick. In early flashback sequences Sheridan at age 12 was portrayed by Sara Paxton. When Sheridan's history was retconned and her flashback sequence age was downgraded from 12 to 6, she was played by Rylee Fansler. She is often seen as a "poor little rich girl" but her love for Luis Lopez-Fitzgerald made her true emotions arise.
Sheridan was inherently a good person for much of the series, until the final year, where she became a villain.

Character history

Background

Sheridan is the daughter of Alistair Crane, a world-famous billionaire and Katherine Crane. Born several decades into the marriage of her parents, Sheridan was generally considered an unwanted child by her father, Alistair, and she was ignored in favor of her older brother, Julian Crane.

Early years

When Sheridan was a young girl, she found a man, Martin Fitzgerald, covered with a bloody sheet in her family's living room. It eventually turned out that Martin defended Sheridan's mother, Katherine, who was physically and sexually abused by Sheridan's father, Alistair, who had stabbed Martin. Due to Sheridan's vague memories as a little girl and the family concealment of the whole ordeal, the event became a mystery and deeply traumatized Sheridan, causing her to frequently sleepwalk, have mental breakdowns and endure nightmares since her youth. Shortly after, Sheridan and Julian were also informed by their father that their missing mother was "dead".
As a result of her uncontrollable fits, Sheridan was sent away to Europe by her father. As Sheridan grew up, she became an arrogant, spoiled and self-absorbed socialite much like Julian. She hung out with the rich and powerful and even claimed friendship with Diana, Princess of Wales of the British Royal family. Sheridan also had a string of torrid love affairs, all of which ended with Sheridan discovering that her boyfriends were only interested in her due to her wealth.

Relationships with Jean-Luc and Luis

At the start of the Passions, Sheridan ended her engagement unknowingly with a French drug cartel member, Jean-Luc Moulin, after discovering that he too was after the Crane riches. Returning to her hometown of Harmony, Sheridan is pulled over by a police officer, Luis Lopez-Fitzgerald for speeding. At first he only wanted to give her a speeding ticket, but when Sheridan arrogantly tries to bribe her way out of said ticket, Luis arrests her for bribing a police officer. Upon learning of her last name, Luis confesses his disdain for the Crane family, suspecting they are linked to the disappearance of his father, Martin, who Sheridan saw wounded in her family's living room. Sheridan is ultimately sentenced to six months of community service at the children's center, as supervised by Luis, wanting to ensure Sheridan does not bribe her way out of performing her duty. While serving her time there, and amidst a brief fling with police chief Sam Bennett's younger brother, Hank Bennett, Sheridan and Luis developed a complex love-hate relationship, often involving the two engaging in various arguments and acting competitive against each other.
Soon, Sheridan's ties to Jean-Luc catch up with her. Unbeknownst to Sheridan, Jean-Luc had been a part of a French drug cartel and she had inadvertently learned the identities of his business partners. This made her a liability to their operation, and she became a target once she left Paris. This led to the FBI being brought in to protect Sheridan, with Luis appointed as her private bodyguard to protect her from hired henchmen sent after her. Both Sheridan and Luis objected to the arrangement at first, but Luis decided to put his job ahead of his personal feelings towards Sheridan, which were now blossoming into love. Sheridan could not do the same and would often put herself in dangerous situations trying to distance herself from Luis.
Just as the two had confessed their growing attraction towards the other, Sheridan was shot in cold blood. Taken away by an ambulance, Luis was told that Sheridan had died. In truth, the attempt on her life was faked to allow Moulin to think Sheridan was dead. Sheridan then fled to Paris where she tried to convince Moulin to drop his vendetta against her. Consulting Moulin's new girlfriend, she tried to set up a meeting with Moulin, who in the end died in a car explosion meant for Sheridan. Several months later, around Christmas time, Sheridan returned to Harmony and reunited with Luis, who asked Sheridan to marry him.
Sheridan's father, Alistair Crane, did not approve of her relationship with Luis. By this point, Sheridan and Luis had put two and two together that the man who she found dying in her childhood home was Luis's father. Fearing that the two would expose Alistair's vast number of illegal activities in their investigation, Alistair and Sheridan's brother Julian hired an actor to trick Sheridan into thinking Luis was only using her for her money. When this scheme failed, Alistair decided that it would be best to rid himself of his least favorite child through murder. Alistair laced Sheridan's wedding band with a quick-acting poison activated by her DNA. Luckily for Sheridan, the ceremony was in a double wedding with her former nephew Ethan Winthrop, and Luis's younger sister Theresa. With Ethan and Theresa set to be wed first, the entire ceremony was derailed due to the actions of Ethan's ex-girlfriend Gwen and Ethan's mother, Ivy Winthrop, who literally crashed the wedding by way of crashing her car into the church. The two decided to postpone their wedding in light of Ethan and Theresa having their wedding day ruined, but went onto their honeymoon anyway.
While on their honeymoon, Alistair had a boat they rented rigged with TNT and detonated it. Sheridan was on board when it happened and was killed. However, there was no body to be found, causing Alistair to take the extreme action of cremating a dummy, in order to make everyone believe Sheridan was dead and stop looking for her.
By this point Sheridan's body washed ashore of a nearby island and was resurrected via the prayers of the white witches Grace Bennett and Charity Standish. Sheridan was found by a fisherman named Brian, having only vague memories of a past life she shared with Luis on the Titanic. Sheridan, now going by the name "Diana", was taken to live with Brian at the island B&B where he resided. There, the pair fell in love but Brian was hesitant towards helping Sheridan recover her memories, out of fear that she would abandon him. Along the way, Sheridan discovered that Brian was estranged from his own family, who he had not seen since he was 18.
The more time the two spent together, both Brian and Sheridan both found something very strange happening as they both started having recurring dreams of being on the Titanic together, along with a man who looked just like Luis. From afar, the witch Tabitha Lennox discovered that Sheridan, Brian, and Luis were three souls forever bound by love, betrayal, and death. Sheridan and Luis, in their various past lives, would be torn apart by Brian with Luis always dying in each successive reincarnation in order to facilitate Brian and Sheridan living happily ever after. This prompted the pair to get engaged. When Sheridan ran up a gambling debt at a casino trying to raise money for her and Brian's wedding, Brian decided to return to his former profession as a race car driver and win enough money to pay off their debt. Brian managed to win the race, but his car was totaled in the process. In the hospital recovering from the accident, Brian learned that he was slowly dying, and at Sheridan's insistence, decided to make an attempt to return home and make amends with his family before passing on.
Returning home, Brian's true identity would be revealed; he was Luis's long-lost older brother Antonio Lopez-Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, when Sheridan came face to face with Luis, all of her lost memories came flooding back. Furthermore, it was revealed that with Sheridan assumed to be dead, that Luis sought comfort from a former girlfriend, Beth Wallace. But while Luis was quick to end things with Beth, Sheridan wouldn't to do the same with Antonio, culminating in her marrying the dying Antonio while sleeping with Luis behind his brother's back.
By this point, Beth was furious at being dumped by Luis as well as by Sheridan's selfish behavior, through her marrying Antonio yet demanding Luis remain her lover on the side. When Sheridan found herself pregnant by one of the two men, Beth decided that drastic action was needed to ensure Sheridan was punished: disguised as a clown, she kidnapped Sheridan and held her prisoner in a pit for several months while preparing to claim her unborn child as her own, after reuniting with Luis and convincing the town that Sheridan had run away from Harmony.
Sheridan ultimately gave birth to a boy who Beth immediately passed off as her and Luis's child and dumped a post-delivery Sheridan into the harbor to drown. However, Charity who had a vision of Sheridan in the water, told Luis where she was and went to look for her. Shortly afterwards Death came to take Luis and Sheridan but Charity saved them. Sheridan tried to convince Luis of what had happened after she recognized her son with Beth and realizing that Beth was the clown kidnapper. Sheridan began to claim that Beth kidnapped her and that Marty was her own, but no one believed her. In her quest to reclaim her child and expose Beth for child stealing and kidnapping, Sheridan's adultery with Luis became public knowledge. With Alistair's help, a now healthy Antonio had Sheridan imprisoned in the psych ward where she received electro-shock therapy in order to erase her memories of Luis. However, released from the mental institution, Sheridan remained defiant and was ultimately freed from Antonio's grasp when Alistair blew up a plane Antonio was on, in order to kill Luis.
Reunited, the two visited Puerto Arena to visit Luis's estranged youngest sister, Paloma. As a baby, Paloma had been sent away by her mother to be raised by Pilar's sister Maria. Paloma had developed a deep resentment for her family for sending her away as a baby and it took much persuasion to get her to return to her home. Paloma finally agreeing only if she could take the Wheelers, an American couple who had helped Maria raise her, with her.
Though the Wheelers claimed never to have been to Harmony, they seemed to be quite familiar with the town and its residents. Luis in particular began to suspect that "Bob Wheeler" was his long lost father, Martin Fitzgerald, which was ultimately confirmed via a DNA test. When confronted with the evidence, Luis was able to get Bob to confess that he was indeed Martin, but Martin refused to divulge his exact reasons for leaving. He claimed that it was to protect his family.
Several months later, they were finally able to get Mrs. Wheeler to confess her true identity. She was Sheridan's "late" mother Katherine Crane. The mystery of Martin's disappearance and its connection to Sheridan's nightmare's soon unfolded after. Alistair, in his youth, was rejected by the true love of his life: Katherine's sister Rachel Barrett. Rachel died in a freak boating accident, and Alistair married Katherine as a substitute. But when Katherine learned that Alistair never really loved her, and was constantly cheating on her, she tried to leave him. Alistair, however, refused to accept it and began raping and beating her to keep her in line. Martin tried to stand up to Alistair on Katherine's behalf, but in a sadistic twist Alistair stabbed Martin in the back with a letter opener causing him to pass out in the Crane living room—which made him the body that Sheridan found as a child. Alistair promptly made arrangements to have Martin buried, but Katherine rescued him and the duo stowed away in the middle of the night fearing for their lives. Alistair then faked Katherine's death rather than let it be made public that his wife had abandoned him.
Sheridan wanted to re-bond with her long-lost mother but Luis wanted nothing to do with Katherine or his father, feeling that they took the coward's way out by fleeing Harmony and their loved ones rather than standing up to Alistair Crane. Things were made even worse due to Sheridan's inability to get Luis to believe her as far as Marty being her biological son and Beth her kidnapper. By the time Sheridan was able to expose Beth, Alistair had managed to whisk Beth and Marty out of the country. Sheridan blamed Beth's escape on Luis' lack of faith in her and threatened to have nothing more to do with him if he could not bring back her son. Luis would leave for Europe in order to search for Beth and Marty, ultimately leaving Sheridan behind in Harmony. Sheridan tried to keep herself busy by befriending Maureen Preston, a single mother who was terminally ill. When Maureen died, Sheridan adopted her son when the boy's father Christopher Boothe came to Harmony. Still bitter and resentful towards Luis over his refusal to believe her about Beth and Marty, Sheridan seduced Christopher sought to create her own family with his son.
Along the way, Alistair attempted to further torment Sheridan and the Lopez-Fitzgerald family by having a surgically altered corpse be delivered to Harmony in a coffin, making it appear that Luis was dead. However, Luis returned home alive after the "Passions Vendetta" storyline with the worst possible news imaginable for Sheridan: Marty and Beth were both dead. By this point, Sheridan was pregnant with Christopher's child but lost the baby after learning of the fate of her first-born child. Meanwhile, the news of her marriage to Christopher caused Luis to give up once and for all on Sheridan as he began a new relationship with Sheridan's niece, Fancy.

Rivalry with Fancy

The notion that Luis would move on, let alone with her niece Fancy, caused a mental breakdown within Sheridan's mind; shunning Chris and his son, Sheridan began morphing into a full-fledged villainess, who was determined to destroy Luis and Fancy for falling in love. When Fancy was raped by her half-brother Vincent Clarkson, Sheridan destroyed evidence regarding the rape in order to make it appear Fancy was making up her claim of being sexually assaulted and later, testified against Luis, when he was put on trial for several murders Vincent had committed as the masked "blackmailer". While Fancy fought to clear Luis of the charges against him, Sheridan was willing to protect Vincent when she discovered that he was the masked blackmailer. Vincent nebulously agreed to get Luis released from death row if Sheridan murdered Theresa, which Sheridan did. Electricuting Theresa, Sheridan discovered that Vincent had no intention of honoring his vow to free Luis. Sheridan's response was to stay silent and protect Vincent, on the basis that she would rather have Luis be dead than with Fancy. Impressed by Sheridan's cold-blooded nature, Vincent agreed to help her find Pretty Crane, Fancy's evil younger sister. Sheridan convinces Pretty to tell Luis how Fancy had disfigured Pretty after a fight over a boy the two girls both loved. However, Fancy was able debunk Pretty's claims by revealing that Fancy disfigured Pretty in self-defense as far as the fact that Pretty was trying to murder Fancy during the fight and that the chemicals used to disfigure Pretty were used by Fancy in a desperate move to stop the murderous Pretty.
In the end, Luis was saved from execution by the combination of Endora Lennox and Eve Russell, who outed Vincent as the true murderer. In the wake of Vincent's arrest, Sheridan's attempt to kill Theresa led to Sheridan confessing that she knew Vincent had framed Luis and that she had tried to kill Theresa. Theresa agreed not to press charges but the revelation was enough to cause Luis to stop loving Sheridan, once and for all and to choose Fancy over her.
By this point Alistair Crane had returned and ordered Vincent to kill Sheridan. Alistair had Marty as well, causing Sheridan to choose to spare Spike over Vincent when the two were hanging over a cliff. Spike led Sheridan to Marty. Spike, on Alistair's orders, sent both Sheridan and Luis on a wild goose chase searching for Marty before finding him. Meanwhile, Pretty had developed a pathological obsession with Luis as well, causing her to form an uneasy alliance with Sheridan against Fancy and Luis.
Sheridan then discovered that Pretty was pregnant with Luis' child, after the pair were forced to make love by Alistair, and that Pretty would use this to her advantage to get closer to Luis. Sheridan went along with Pretty as she used her baby to get all of Luis' attention until they take her to the hospital for a checkup, and Pretty is revealed to not have been pregnant the entire time and was faking it. Sheridan was just as angry with Pretty as Luis and Fancy were, demanding to know why she would hurt Luis so much, claiming to love him. After the revelation, Sheridan went back to her cottage to discover Pretty there planning to throw acid in Fancy's face, Sheridan let Pretty go after being treated by the acid herself. Up in Fancy's room at the Crane Mansion, Pretty was getting ready to throw the acid, but Sheridan is able to knock it out of her hand, and then reveals to Fancy and Luis that Pretty's scar was also a fake, and watches her niece have a mental breakdown. Sheridan reveals to Luis that Crane women have a history of mental illness beginning with her grandmother who went insane and was locked in the attic at the mansion. During this stolen moment, Sheridan then proceeded to ask Luis whether they had a chance to be together ever again, once and for all. Luis reassured Sheridan that he would always love her, but he is in love with Fancy and plans to marry her. Sheridan decides to accept it and move on.
Until the quad wedding rehearsal, where Sheridan began to think that she will go insane just like her grandmother who lost her mind because of losing someone she loved. Sheridan then discovered that Vicki and Vincent were planning on feeding everyone poison mushroom sauce at the rehearsal dinner. Sheridan contemplated allowing only Fancy to eat the toxic sauce, so that she could be with Luis. But, Sheridan decided to do the right thing and confronted her psychotic nephew and Vicki, until they put a gun to her back and threatened Marty, if she told everyone about their plan. Vincent and Vicki locked her in the church closet, as she screamed for help, everyone she loved began eating the poison sauce. She was let out of the closet by Esme, and the two, were able to hold Vincent and stop Vicki, but it was too late, everyone was poisoned. Sheridan tried to get Luis to get up and move as Eve said that would slow the effects of the poison, but he asked Sheridan to save Fancy, and not him, and that she would do it if she really loved him. Sheridan tried to stop Vincent from killing his mother, but she was forced to eat the poison mushroom sauce by Vicki, and died with everyone else, but Tabitha will sacrifice her magic to save everyone. In the July 23, 2008 episode, Antonio returns to Harmony alive and well. He explains to Sheridan that he was being held captive by Alistair all these years and was only able to escape after the guards stopped getting paid following Alistair's death. Sheridan has decided to start a new relationship with Antonio after he convinced her they were soul mates.

Controversy

Sheridan's friendship with Princess Diana came with much controversy because of the nature in which the relationship was handled. Following a car accident, Sheridan made an unexpected recovery following massive injuries and received a visit from her friend Diana, whom Sheridan told, "Thank God I was wearing my seat belt. If only Diana had been wearing hers". The storyline was considered "tasteless, offensive and exploitative", but the show's creator and head writer James E. Reilly considered the decision to include the presence of Diana the "beginning to establish Sheridan's identity".

Awards