Linda Denise Blair – American Actress

Linda Denise Blair (born January 22, 1959) is an American actress. Blair is best known for her role as the possessed child, Regan, in the film The Exorcist (1973), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award and two Golden Globes, winning one. She reprised her role in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).

Known background and early career
Blair was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and was raised in Westport, Connecticut. She began her career as a six-year-old child model and started acting with a regular role on the short-lived Hidden Faces (1968-69) daytime soap. Her first theatrical film appearance was in The Way We Live Now (1970). Blair was selected from a field of 600 applicants for her most notable role as Regan in The Exorcist (1973). The role earned her a Golden Globe and People’s Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as an Academy Award nomination. She reprised her role in the sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), garnering a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress of 1978. Between these two films, she appeared in the television films Born Innocent (1974), Airport 1975 (1974), Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1975) and Sweet Hostage (1975) opposite Martin Sheen.

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The Exorcist

Article from the British newspaper The Guardian, Thursday 14 March 1974. Written by Derek Malcolm
"My janitors are going bananas wiping up the vomit," said a harassed American cinema manager during the recent run of The Exorcist (X). I’m neither surprised nor overly sympathetic. Any cinema that shows a film which has as its spectacular highlight a young girl turned by demonic possession into a suppurating grotesque mouthing obscenities as she masturbates with a crucifix deserves what it gets in extra cleaning bills.

The picture, made by William Friedkin with an avid eye for shock-inducing detail, didn’t affect me that way. I can’t even say I was scared. But then critics acquire copper-lined stomachs these days, and the nerves to go with it. I am quite sure a great many people will feel both frightened and sick. My own reaction was one of first irritation and then anger that a film-maker of Friedkin’s resource should lend his talent, and that of a good cast, to something so essentially meretricious.

As a horror film pure and simple, I suppose it is a pretty expert job, though I have the feeling that Roger Corman would have done it better. But as a serious and remotely sober analysis of certain spiritual things we humans, hooked on materialism, cannot fathom, "The Exorcist" is practically a non-starter. Its ugly, threatening surface betrays no more real depth than "I was a Teenage Werewolf." If the film’s a religious experience, I’m glad I’m agnostic. If it’s to be considered as a work of art, it’s mutton dressed as lamb.

This is not to deny the garish power of the final scene of exorcism. Mr Friedkin throws everything at us bar the kitchen sink, including half the hard-working cast. And Max von Sydow lends a pale dignity to the ageing exorcist that is equalled by Ellen Burstyn’s portrait of the distraught mother and Jason Miller’s shrink priest. As for Linda Blair, who plays the unfortunate girl, she is never quite submerged by all the head swivelling gimmickry. I hope she will forget the experience as quickly as I will.
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I saw the movie back in 1974 and it didn’t exactly scare the living daylight out of me then, neither did I puke all over the place (I was 21). When I saw the uncut version 8 or 10 years ago it didn’t scare me any more then the cut one did, nor did it upset my stomach particularly  – Ted

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