(Taken from Fear Magazine )
(Issue 6 - May/June 1989)
Linda
Blair, star of The Exorcist, was tormented both on and off screen for her role
as the devil-posessed child Regan. Sections of the press and public alike pilloried her parents
for letting her take part in the movie. Yet as Allan Bryce discovers, despite
continued press criticism of her lifestyle, she is proud of that part and still
an actress.
Many actresses have started
their careers in exploitation movies, and then denounced them after moving into
mainstream. But good old Linda Blair seems to have dont it in reverse,
starting off with an Oscar nomination for her first screen role as the
devil-possessed Regan in The Exorcist, and graduating to
chicks-in-chains potboilers and the kind of flicks where the hero only gets the
girl after all the rest of the cast have had a good shot at her.
Her latest magnum opus is Medusa's Silent Assassins, in which she plays
a 'nice' part for a change as the simpering girlfriend of LA cop Sam Kettle (
Sam Jones) and gets kidnapped by a bunch of ninja warriors like the menu at
your local Chinese takeaway. It's a typical thud and blunder epic, the
like of which Miss Blair could ( and possibly did) do in her sleep. but
as we found when we talked to her recently she was pleasently unapologetic
about the fact: 'It may not be art,' she chuckled, 'but listen, if anybody
likes Chuck Norris type movies, I think it's as good as any of those . . .'
Nobody
could really dislike Linda Blair after meeting her in person: she's bright, enthusiastic, friendly, and perhaps
above all, appealingly vulnerable ( a fact exploited to the maximum in that
aviation classic Airport 1975 where she played a youngster in need of an
emergency kidney transplant. 'Poor kid,' noted one concerned bystander:
'She's in Washington and her kidney is in Los Angeles.') But then most of
the people who write nasty things about her haven't met her at all --- they've
just seen a few too many of her movies.
'Can you believe that i even had some bad press in England this year?'
she complains, 'just because I was dating a professional football player.
They wrote terrible things about me that were so wrong that I just wanted to
sue them. But I couldn't be bothered to waste time on them, they're
second rate. This article said I hadn't worked since I was 18. They
found a picture from Airport 1975 where i was lying on my back looking
horrible --- I think they picked it out intentionally! Why do people
write bad things about me when I'm out there hustling and working as hard as I
can trying to change my career? I'm reliable in the business. I'm
not a mean person. I'm not rude.' I assured her she didn't have to
convince me --- I even like her movies.
DISTURBED
Connecticut-born
Linda's showbiz career took off when she started modelling commercials in New
York at the age of five. The turning point came when she went to audition
for The Exorcist. 'I came out from the interview and I said to my
mother 'That was the filthiest piece of paper I've ever had to read!'
Well, I went on to meet with the director many times and go through a number of
other auditions until eventually I got the job. The rest is history --- I
think.'
She was 13 when she made the film, 14 when it opened
at cinemas worldwide and ( appropriately enough ) went to become the 13th
highest grossing picture of all time. Many contemporary critics thought
that it was wrong to place such an innocent youngster inthe midst of one of the
most gruelling horror movies ever made, but Linda says 'I really had no idea
what the movie was about when we made it - all the underlying tones of the
devil and possession. To me it was almost a joke and I didn't realise
that adults would take it so seriously. Afterwards the press descended on
me and started saying I should be disturbed and maybe on the edge of a nervous
breakdown, which was totally untrue. I just had no conception of what I
was involved with.'
So how did her parents feel about this? ' They knew me well enough to realise
it would do me no harm,' she says. 'But it upset me to see them go
through a lot of ridicule for very unnecessary reasons. It is only a
movie after all. People must remember we are here to entertain. I
don't like all the pictures that are made. I don't like all the pictures
i have been in. But I am proud of my involvement with The
Exorcist. It took me a long time to understand I was part of a very
big piece of history in film-making.
UNKNOWN COMIC
Linda followed The
Exorcist with a number of meaty roles in television movies like Sara T -
Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (where she played a young girl who takes to
the bottle to escape family problems) and Born Innocent (Where she gets
thrown into a juvenile detention centre and is raped with a broom handle by
fellow inmates!). Those movies consolidated her reputation as the most
put-upon screen teenager of the Seventies and also seemed to convince many
pundits that The Exorcist hadn't done that good a job on getting the
devil out of her.
Her private life seemed to back this up: she ran the predictable route to
Hollywood maturity through the sex-and-drugs-in-the-headlines syndrome, the
gossip columns dining out on her coke bust at age 18 and nude photo set in Oui
magazine. Somewhere along the way she grew up and turned into the sparky,
pneumatic heroine that she is today.
The Linda Blair of the late Eighties is also a self-confessed workaholic who tends to make
about five pictures a year and then promptly forgets about them. 'I knew
I did one in the Philipines recently ( Beyond Control ) with Chris
Mitchum, Robert Mitchum's son. The script was kind of good, but about
halfway through we realised these people didn't know how to make movies at all,
and there was nothing we could do. When the Filipinos make films, they
put the camera on you and you say your dialogue and yell, 'Cut!'. They
then move the camera and they edit as they work. It's amazing that there's
ever anything to release afterwards!'
Her other 1988 projects have included Witchcraft, a low-budget Italian
Horror movie with David Hasselhof. 'I've not seen it, she says,
'but I hear it's like a bloody Fellini movie. Apparently the Italians
are very good at putting a lot of graphics in afterwards. The I did a
comedy film with David Langston, who's the Unknown Comic ( he certainly is over
here). It's called Up your Alley and is a very sweet, funny
movie. I am hoping that England will have a very big release for that one
. . .'
EXORCISED
One thing that Linda
isn't involved with is the second Exorcist sequel, now in production in
Hollywood. It's tentatively titled Exorcist: 15 years later and is
based on William Peter Blatty's book sequel, Legion. 'I was told a
few months ago that they were making Exorcist 3,' says the
actress. 'Blatty wrote the book some time back. It's about a priest
killer on the loose in Washington. That's all I know. I know it's
nothing to do with the original, so my feeling is that the public is going to
get angry. I feel that the audience will be let down. Blatty
doesn't live with it every day like I do. I know what people feel about
it.'
But she might very well have turned it down even if she was offered it because
she is firmly resolved to exorcise her old screen image. 'I'm gonna be a
nice girl from now on,' she says firmly. 'Im almost thirty now, and I'm
very proud of that. But it's time to start thinking about what I want to
achieve in life. I want to continue acting, but also go more into the
production side of movies. In fact I am putting together a film myself
which is kind of a little bit political but it doesn't preach in any way.
It's about freedom of speech and about who I am as a person. Who is
Linda? I dont like a lot of things that are going on in the world.
I think there's a lot of pain and suffering and I just want to do films that
speak out and say what the hell's happening here, you know?' Yes, there's
no doubt this girl's got a good head on her shoulders --- even if it does
sometimes spin at 360 degrees . . .