How Linda Blair survived the most controversial role of the century and is ready to return to it

Linda Blair in an image taken in 1975, when 'The Exorcist' had already made her one of the best-known and most persecuted girls in show business. Walt Disney Television Photo Archives (ABC)

“Do you know what your character has to do?

Yes, bad things.

What bad things?

Well... she Pushes a man out of his bedroom window and punches his mother in the face and masturbates with a crucifix.

I looked at his mother.

She seemed to realize that her daughter was special.

Linda didn't bother.

Do you know what that means?

Asked.

Yes, jerk off, she answered without hesitation, laughing a little.

I looked at her mother again.

Have you ever done that?

I asked Linda.

Sure, don't you?

I have found Regan."

This conversation that the director William Friedkin (Chicago, 87 years old) captures in his memoirs

and that today would be unimaginable, details the exact moment in which Linda Blair (Saint Louis, Missouri, 64 years old), took over the role of Regan McNeil or, as she is really known throughout the world, the girl from

.

More information

Levitations, 'Samsonism' and full agenda: the life of an exorcist in 2023

More than a thousand teenagers had passed

through that

The impossibility of finding a girl capable of carrying the weight of the plot had been the reason why Mike Nichols had abandoned the project.

Friedkin was about to follow in his footsteps when the miracle happened.

Jamie Lee Curtis had been the first choice, but his mother, actress Janet Leigh, was adamantly opposed.

Linda Blair listens to instructions from director William Friedkin during the tense filming of 'The Exorcist.'Michael Ochs Archives (Getty Images)

Linda Blair appears on the Oscars red carpet on the night she was nominated for 'The Exorcist.'Michael Ochs Archives (Getty Images)

The harshness of the script was no secret.

It was based on a true story, an alleged possession that occurred in the late forties that the writer William Peter Blatty had turned into a best seller that exceeded 10 million copies.

Blair lacked experience, she had posed as a model, her true passion was horse riding and her own agency did not trust her, but Friedkin did not hesitate: "She was a normal and happy 12-year-old girl," she said.

That film would be the first step to stop being one.

The Exorcist

is a classic in conversations about "cursed movies."

A fire devastated part of the sets, several relatives of crew members (it is said that nine) died during filming, and there were countless accidents that caused the director, perhaps as a publicity stunt, to ask the priest who acted as adviser bless the set

A blessing that did not serve to avoid the serious security failures that caused both Blair and the actress who gave life to her mother, Ellen Burstyn, suffer aftermath today due to the blows received during some scenes.

The shoot was hellish, Blair's makeup sessions lasted four hours a day and the studio was kept in sub-zero temperatures to achieve the condensation that came out of the mouths of the actors during the exorcism.

It had been a grueling seven months, but the truly gruesome thing for Blair would come after her last clapperboard hit.

Despite the fact that the film was approved by the Catholic Church, its impact aroused interest in the figure of the evil one and the famous evangelist Billy Graham, leader of the religious ultra-right in the United States, proclaimed: "The devil is in every frame of the film ”.

Blair was accused by her supporters of "glorifying Satan" and received death threats.

The production company Warner Bros. hired bodyguards to protect her 24 hours a day for six months and her family was forced to change homes several times.

Tell me about faith, girl

Raised in a non-religious environment, Blair did not feel the film had any spiritual connotations: for her it was the story of a single mother who would do anything for her daughter.

Many viewers and journalists did not interpret it that way and approached her in search of answers that went beyond her facet as an actress.

“For me

was a work of fiction.

I did not realize then that it was something real, and when the press asked me about all the things of the devil, I felt unbearable pressure, ”she declared years later to the web specialized in horror films Dread

.

Linda Blair entering Studio 54.Ron Galella (Ron Galella Collection via Getty)

Linda Blair, William Friedkin, Ellen Burstyn and the writer William Peter Blatty in the revival of 'The Exorcist' in the year 2000.Jeff Kravitz (FilmMagic)

The Exorcist

grossed more than $400 million and became not just a box office success, but a social phenomenon.

It earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture (a first for a horror film).

Among them, the best supporting actress for Linda Blair.

After winning the Golden Globe, she was the favorite in the category, until an unexpected revelation ended her chances.

Regan's cavernous voice, one of the scariest elements of the film, actually belonged to Mercedes McCambridge, a notorious 1950s high school girl who

played Joan Crawford's nemesis in

She was the one who really yelled disturbing phrases like “Have you seen what your filthy daughter has done?”

or "Your mother sucks dicks in hell."

01:40

Trailer for 'The Exorcist'

Friedkin turned to McCambridge after finding that no sound effects applied to Blair's voice instilled the necessary fear.

The interpreter took the assignment very seriously and prepared her voice by smoking and drinking huge amounts of whiskey despite being a recovering alcoholic.

She even tied a bow around her neck to further strain her throat during recordings.

Her revelations were a blow to Blair's candidacy.

"I have nothing against the girl, I don't even know her, but if people had heard her say some of those obscenities, they would have laughed," a very angry McCambridge revealed to The New York Times, fed up that "even

guy Who Gave Up the Jewels” would have been credited in the film, but his work remained unrecognized.

The explanation seemed to be that, at first, the actress, a devout Christian, had preferred to remain anonymous, but after the success of the film she felt that it was a new opportunity for her career.

Animal rights advocate Linda Blair poses next to a sign that reads 'Animal Experiments Make My Head Spin', an allusion to the famous scene from 'The Exorcist'.Ron Galella (Ron Galella Collection via Getty)

Years later it was also revealed that sequences such as masturbation with the crucifix had been carried out by the actress Eileen Dietz.

“They were looking for someone who was small but also very strong,” she told The

.

“You have to remember that Linda Blair was only 12 years old, so it wasn't possible for her to film things like the crucifix masturbation scene or the fistfight with Father Karras.

That's where I came in.

If you see Regan throwing up, that's me, but if you see her after throwing up, then she's Linda."

In the end the statuette went to another girl whose career, and life, would prove as erratic as Blair's, Tatum O'Neal.

life after demon

After

came the television adaptation of another best-selling book,

, one of those novels that during the eighties and thanks to the Círculo de Lectores could be found in any Spanish home.

On the cover appeared the face of a long-suffering Linda Blair in the role of Christine Parker, a teenager mistreated by her parents who ended up in a terrifying reformatory where she suffered all kinds of abuse.

It was the most watched television movie in the United States.

Off-screen, Linda's life was beginning to look dangerously like her latest scripts.

While she was shooting

(1977), the long-awaited sequel to the film that elevated her and was torn apart by critics, she began an affair with singer Rick Springfield.

He was 25 years old, she was only 15. The singer told it in detail in his autobiography,

.

“I am her first lover and she is an enthusiastic learner.

We share a love for dogs and sex, separately, not in combination.

Most of the time we do not leave the apartment.

She is invited to Hollywood premieres and parties and we go together, the media slaughter us.

We are shocked by the outraged articles being written about our relationship."

Even today they are close and share their devotion to animals by participating in charity events together, as Blair makes clear on social media.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Linda Blair Worldheart (@lindablairwf)

After the breakup, and still being a minor, she began dating Rick James, known for his hit

and self-styled "icon of drugs and eroticism".

The press insinuated that it was James who had introduced her to the world of drugs.

Later another of her boyfriends, Glenn Hughes, bassist for Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, claimed that they had broken up with her because he considered her too wild ("she took too much cocaine").

At the age of 18, she was arrested after a police raid and charged with possession of amphetamines and cocaine.

She spent three years on probation and had to make 12 public appearances raising awareness about the danger of substance abuse.

She was spared from going to prison, but not from the media trial.

Her career was beginning to be a pale memory when she made another wrong decision: posing for

.

All she got was the raging breath of fatphobia and an official death certificate for her career.

bye lassie

Her off-screen life had little to do with the seraphic image she had projected in

(1974), in which she played a girl awaiting a kidney transplant (more famous than the original is the parody Landed

, in which the nun who enlivens the sick woman's trip cuts the cables that keep her alive with the beat of her guitar).

The girl who dreamed of being an Amazon, who wanted to "be a Disney princess", who wanted to be in

or

, in her own words, who "did not want to be a monster", ended up starring in B-series productions of girls in jails like

(1983), a humorous erotica from the early eighties, and in various horror by-products.

Demonstrating a great sense of humor, he starred in the parody of his most famous film,

(1990), where he shared the lead with Leslie Nielsen.

He, too, felt flashes of former glory: in the late 1990s he played Rizzo in the Broadway production of

and was given a small role, barely a cameo, by Wes Craven in

(1996), the definitive revival of the

.

Linda Blair poses with the dog Beethoven in Los Angeles in 1997. She has been a strong supporter of animal rights for decades. Barry King (Getty Images)

Linda Blair was one of the stars hiding under a disguise in the latest US edition of 'Mask singer'.FOX (FOX Image Collection via Getty I)

Aware of the low level of his career, he focused on his great passion: animals.

She invested her life savings in Linda Blair World Heart, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping and rehabilitating abused animals.

After Katrina she rescued more than 50 animals in New Orleans.

She is also a staunch supporter of pit bulls, with whom, as she explained on an Oprah Winfrey television special, she feels a deep connection.

"A big pit bull followed me once and because the media insisted it was a killer dog, I ran home," explained Blair, who knew nothing about the breed except what she had heard on the news. .

"Then I realized that this dog was not attacking me, he was asking for help," she added, Blair.

"I brought him some water and his behavior showed me that he was the angel that I now know had been sent to me."

As a victim of media speculation and lies, he knows what stigmatization is (and as a protagonist of

is an expert in stigmata.)

Fully recovered from the mental health problems that led her to confine herself to an institution, and also reconciled with her past, she is ready to return to the front row.

A few weeks ago it was announced that both she and Ellen Burstyn will participate in a new installment of

, 50 years after becoming a Hollywood promise that was not fulfilled.

He became something better: a contemporary legend.

You can follow ICON on