Linda Blair

Linda Denise Blair was born on January 22, 1959, in St. Louis, Missouri, to James Frederick and Elinore Blair. Her father, a Navy test pilot who later became an executive recruiter, relocated the family to Westport, Connecticut when Blair was two years old. Her mother worked as a real-estate agent in Westport. Blair has an older sister, Debbie, and an older brother, Jim, and is of Scottish ancestry. She began modeling at age five, appearing in catalogs for Sears, JCPenney, and Macy's, as well as more than 70 commercials for Welch's grape jams and other companies. By age six she had secured a print advertising contract with The New York Times and had begun riding horses, eventually training as an equestrian.

Blair entered the entertainment industry as a child, taking a regular role on the short-lived daytime soap opera Hidden Faces from 1968 to 1969. Her first theatrical film appearance came in The Way We Live Now in 1970, followed by a small part in the comedy The Sporting Club in 1971. In 1972, she was chosen from approximately 600 candidates to play Regan MacNeil, the possessed daughter of a famous actress, in William Friedkin's The Exorcist, released in 1973. The performance earned her a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and a nomination for the Academy Award in the same category. Following the film's December 1973 premiere, Blair faced intense media scrutiny, anonymous death threats, and speculation about her mental health, prompting Warner Bros. to send the then-14-year-old on an international press tour.

In the years immediately following The Exorcist, Blair took on a series of television films. She starred opposite Kim Hunter in Born Innocent in 1974, playing a runaway teenager who is sexually abused, a role that drew criticism from several advocacy organizations. That same year she appeared in a supporting part in the disaster film Airport 1975. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1975, living with her sister Debbie, and went on to lead roles in Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, in which she played a teenager who becomes addicted to alcohol, Sweet Hostage opposite Martin Sheen, and Victory at Entebbe in 1976, a dramatization of a real hostage situation featuring Anthony Hopkins and Elizabeth Taylor.

Blair reprised the role of Regan in Exorcist II: The Heretic in 1977, earning a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress. Despite grossing $30.7 million at the box office, the film was a critical failure and was at the time the most expensive film Warner Bros. had produced. After completing the sequel, Blair took a year away from acting and competed in national equestrian circuits under the pseudonym Martha McDonald. She returned to the screen in 1978 with the Wes Craven-directed television horror film Stranger in Our House, based on a novel by Lois Duncan, and with Wild Horse Hank, a Canadian production in which she drew on her equestrian training to portray a college student working to protect wild horses.

Her career shifted direction in 1979 with the musical drama Roller Boogie, which established her as a sex symbol. The following year she co-starred with Dirk Benedict in Ruckus, playing a woman who helps a Vietnam veteran evade hostile locals. Throughout the early 1980s she appeared in a succession of low-budget horror and exploitation films, including the slasher film Hell Night in 1981 opposite Peter Barton and Vincent Van Patten, the women-in-prison film Chained Heat in 1983, and the exploitation thriller Savage Streets in 1984, in which she played the leader of a female vigilante gang. Also in 1983, Blair posed nude in Playboy. She followed those credits with Red Heat in 1985, playing a prisoner of war in West Germany, and Night Force the same year, in which she portrayed a woman traveling to Mexico to rescue a friend from terrorists. The period from 1980 to 1985 brought significant critical backlash, including five Razzie Award nominations and two Razzie wins for Worst Actress.

In the late 1980s Blair continued working in low-budget horror, appearing in Grotesque in 1988 opposite Tab Hunter and in the Italian production Witchery the same year alongside David Hasselhoff. She then starred in the romantic comedy Up Your Alley opposite Murray Langston and in the Exorcist spoof Repossessed in 1990, co-starring Leslie Nielsen. Her work in the early 1990s included the Australian productions Fatal Bond in 1991 and Dead Sleep in 1992. In 1996 she reunited with director Wes Craven for a cameo as a reporter in Scream.

Blair's Broadway career brought her to the stage in 1994, and she returned to Broadway in 1997 in a revival of Grease, playing the role of Rizzo. Also in 1997, she appeared in a Channel 4 documentary titled Didn't You Used to be Satan?, which examined her life and the lasting influence of The Exorcist on her career. The following year she was included in critic Mark Kermode's BBC documentary The Fear of God, later released as a special feature on The Exorcist DVD. In 1999 she appeared in an online parody titled The Blair Bitch Project.

Beginning in 2000, Blair hosted the Fox Family reality series Scariest Places on Earth, a role she continued through 2006. She made appearances on the Animal Planet series Pit Boss from 2010 to 2012. In 2023 she reprised the role of Regan MacNeil for a second time in The Exorcist: Believer. Away from acting, Blair has been a prominent figure in animal rights advocacy. In 2004 she founded the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to rehabilitating and rehoming rescue animals.