Linda Blair scared the world in The Exorcist. But while the film broke ground in horror, Blair, just 15 at the time, paid a terrifying price for nailing the role of Regan MacNeil a little too well. After the 1973 release, she wasn’t just praised or criticized. She was chased down the street.
This wasn’t your average case of horror backlash. Blair’s haunting performance hit so hard that furious viewers flooded her with death threats. Some even accused her of glorifying Satan. Instead of separating fiction from reality, the public turned their fear into fury and aimed it straight at a teenage girl.
“It was so controversial, so of course, I am at the very pinnacle of that. So, it all became my fault,” Blair told OWN in 2016 (via Cheat Sheet). “Headlines sell papers, whether positive or negative. And in this case, it was very difficult on a 15-year-old girl.”
Even though she was just an actor doing her job, the world acted like she summoned the devil herself. Viewers and critics slammed the film for being too gruesome, dark, and sacrilegious. But instead of blaming the director or even the story, many turned their attention to Linda Blair, the face of evil in The Exorcist.
And it didn’t stop at angry letters. “You’re pursued. They’re in the bushes. They’re chasing you down the street,” Blair revealed on Studio 10 in 2018. “You don’t have any privacy. You don’t know who you are.” As wild as that sounds, it was her reality. The chaos didn’t just affect her safety. It flipped her whole life. She had to finish school quickly and jump straight into a non-stop workload, doing film after film just to outrun the madness.
Still, Blair never turned her back on the movie that changed everything. She credited director William Friedkin for having her back during the shoot. “He made sure I was stable,” she recalled, thankful for the care he put into protecting her.
Over time, the noise faded. The fear turned into admiration, and the backlash transformed into legacy. Today, The Exorcist is a cult classic and a horror benchmark, and Blair remains proud of her role. “No one ever expected it to have the longevity that it has had throughout the years. And, I’m very proud of it, years later,” she said on OWN.
After a break from the spotlight post-2016, she popped back in 2020 with JJ Villard’s Fairy Tales as Mama Bear. In 2021, she lined up for a role in Landfill as Detective Karen Atwood. From being chased down the road to becoming a horror legend, Linda Blair proved that sometimes playing the part too well comes with a scary price and a lasting legacy.
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