Remember Regan from The Exorcist? Here’s What Linda Blair Looks Like Now

There are certain performances that belong to everyone who ever watched them, and Linda Blair’s turn as Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist is one of them.

She was 13 years old when she filmed it.

She was up against 600 other actresses for the role, opposite one of the most respected dramatic actors in Hollywood, in a film that would go on to terrify an entire generation and fundamentally change what American audiences believed movies were capable of.

She pulled it off — won a Golden Globe, earned an Oscar nomination, and became one of the most famous faces in the world practically overnight.

What happened after that is a story that goes a lot deeper than most people know.

Here’s what Linda Blair looks like now — and the remarkable life she has built since Regan.

She Was Selected from More Than 600 Applicants for the Role

When director William Friedkin began casting The Exorcist in 1972, the search for Regan MacNeil was one of the most competitive in Hollywood history.

Linda Blair was chosen from a field of more than 600 young actresses to play the possessed daughter of a famous actress, a character who would become one of cinema’s most enduring images.

She was not yet a teenager when she auditioned.

She beat out every other candidate with a combination of naturalism, emotional openness, and an instinct for the camera that most adult actors spend decades trying to develop.

Friedkin had been searching for a real child — not a Hollywood child — and Blair was it.

She Had Already Been Working Since She Was Five

Blair didn’t arrive at The Exorcist as an unknown.

She began her career as a child model at age five, appearing in catalogs for Sears, JCPenney, and Macy’s, and in more than 70 commercials for brands including Welch’s.

By age six, she had secured a print advertising contract with The New York Times.

She also began riding horses at six — a skill that would come back into play in unexpected ways later in her career.

Her first acting role came on the daytime soap opera Hidden Faces in 1968, followed by small film appearances before she was ten.

By any measure, she was a working professional long before Regan MacNeil existed.

Her Performance Earned a Golden Globe and an Oscar Nomination

The Exorcist premiered in December 1973 and immediately became a cultural earthquake.

Lines stretched around city blocks. People reportedly fainted in theaters. The Catholic Church condemned it. Audiences couldn’t stop talking about it.

Blair won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and earned an Academy Award nomination in the same category, making her one of the youngest nominees in Oscar history at that time.

Film critic and historian Mark Clark wrote that in her performance, Blair matched her adult co-star Ellen Burstyn “note-for-note” — an extraordinary observation about a 13-year-old going head-to-head with one of the most respected actresses of her generation.

The Fame Came with Serious Consequences Nobody Warned Her About

After the premiere, Blair’s life became complicated in ways no studio could fully manage.

Some reporters speculated publicly about her mental state, suggesting that filming the role had caused psychological damage.

She received anonymous death threats from religious extremists who objected to the film’s content.

Warner Bros. responded by hiring police to live with the Blair family around the clock for six months, according to IMDB’s biography on Blair.

When the studio stopped paying for security, the threats continued, and the family eventually had to hide Blair with friends across multiple states to keep her safe.

She was 14 years old.

The studio’s response to this pressure was to send her on an international press tour to prove she was “just a normal teenager.”

She was not, of course, a normal teenager — not anymore.

She Followed Up with Two of the Most Serious TV Films of the Decade

Rather than disappear into light entertainment, Blair immediately took on television roles that tackled some of the most difficult subjects of the era.

Born Innocent (1974) cast her as a teenager sent to a brutal juvenile detention facility.

It was the number one television movie of that year — watched by millions of American families who then argued about it at the dinner table the next morning.

Sarah T. — Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1975) followed, with Blair playing a teenage girl spiraling into addiction.

Both films were ratings successes, and both proved she was an actress willing to do real, difficult work — not just trade on the notoriety of The Exorcist.

These were not safe choices for a teenage actress with everything to lose.

She Took a Year Off to Compete in Equestrian Circuits

After filming Exorcist II: The Heretic in 1977, Blair did something that almost nobody in Hollywood does after a franchise follow-up.

She stepped away entirely and spent a full year competing in national equestrian circuits.

She competed under the pseudonym Martha McDonald, which meant most people in the circuit had no idea she was the girl from The Exorcist.

She was simply a young woman who loved horses and could ride.

It was, by all accounts, a grounding experience — a chance to be good at something that had nothing to do with being famous.

She Became a Cult Icon Through the 1980s Genre Film Scene

The early 1980s brought a new chapter, and Blair leaned into it with full commitment.

Hell Night (1981) earned her a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress, and films like Chained Heat (1983) and Savage Streets (1984) turned her into a genuine grindhouse legend.

Yes, she also picked up Razzie nominations along the way — five total, with two wins for Worst Actress.

She has always discussed that era with good humor, and the films themselves have become beloved touchstones for fans of 1980s genre cinema.

The low-budget work was not an accident or a desperate move.

It was a deliberate pivot toward a world that still wanted her and gave her room to lead.

She Played Rizzo on Broadway and Made a Cameo in Scream

In 1996, Blair reunited with director Wes Craven — who had previously directed her in the 1978 TV horror film Stranger in Our House — for a brief cameo in the slasher hit Scream.

It was the kind of knowing wink at horror fans that only someone with Blair’s specific history could land.

The same year, she took on the role of Betty Rizzo in a Broadway revival of Grease, playing the sharp-tongued Pink Ladies leader at the St. James Theatre in New York.

Rizzo was a stretch from anything her fans expected, which was entirely the point.

She Hosted Scariest Places on Earth for Six Years

In 2000, the theatrical re-release of The Exorcist brought Blair back into wide public attention.

She parlayed that renewed visibility into a hosting role on the Fox Family reality series Scariest Places on Earth, which followed her to notoriously haunted locations around the world.

The show ran from 2000 to 2006 and was a genuine hit, introducing Blair to an entirely new generation of viewers.

It was also cleverly cast — who better to host a ghost show than the woman who made millions of people afraid to sleep in 1973?

She Appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race and The Masked Singer

In the years that followed Scariest Places on Earth, Blair maintained a presence in pop culture through a series of appearances that showed she understood exactly what she meant to her audience.

She appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race, a show where contestants literally compete dressed as her most famous character.

She showed up on The Masked Singer and was featured in Eli Roth’s History of Horror on AMC, which treated her seriously as a genre figure — not a punchline — and gave younger fans a proper window into her legacy.

These were not desperate grabs for attention.

They were well-timed, self-aware, and clearly on her own terms.

She Returned to Regan One More Time in 2023

Fifty years after the original, Blair made a surprise appearance in The Exorcist: Believer (2023), reprising her role as Regan MacNeil in a scene that reunited her with Ellen Burstyn.

Universal had purchased the rights to the franchise for $400 million and was developing a new trilogy.

Blair has said the initial call from director David Gordon Green and producer Jason Blum was handled with genuine respect — they called to ask for her blessing before asking for anything else.

“They said: ‘We understand you don’t really want to be part of it, but we’d love your blessing,'” she recalled. “And I said: ‘Absolutely.'”

From blessing to cameo was a short step, and the result was a moment fans had quietly waited decades for.

She Walked Away from Hollywood to Save Animals

Here is where Linda Blair’s story takes its most unexpected and genuinely moving turn.

Starting in the late 1990s, Blair began shifting her focus away from acting and toward animal rescue — and eventually, the animals won completely.

She has been direct about how it happened.

“I kind of unknowingly left the business because I gave my word to the animals,” she has said. “Spiritually, emotionally, I am unable to stop trying to help and change the laws and stop the unnecessary euthanasia and pet overpopulation.”

For Blair, this was not a retirement from public life.

It was a calling that simply proved louder than everything else.

She Founded the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation in 2003

Blair officially launched the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation in 2003, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating, and rehoming abused, neglected, and abandoned animals in the Los Angeles area.

The foundation operates from a property in Acton, California — an A2-zoned parcel that the team spent three years searching for — where rescued animals receive care until they are placed in permanent homes.

The work involves building shelters against high desert winds, installing fencing and plumbing, managing overcrowding crises, and fighting what Blair describes as a genuine emergency in California’s shelter system.

She has poured her life savings into it.

She remains its founder and president, and she is still in the trenches of it today.

She Is a Fierce Advocate Against Breed-Specific Legislation

Beyond rescue work, Blair has become one of the most vocal opponents of breed-specific legislation — laws that ban or restrict certain dog breeds based on appearance rather than behavior.

Her position aligns with the American Veterinary Medical Association, the CDC, and the American Kennel Club, all of which oppose breed bans on both scientific and practical grounds.

Blair has testified, spoken publicly, and used her platform consistently to make the case that blaming the dog instead of the owner is both ineffective and unjust.

She has also been transparent about how exhausting this work has become — and how the scale of California’s pet overpopulation crisis has stretched her small team to its limits.

She keeps going anyway.

She Co-Authored a Book on Veganism and Has Been Plant-Based Since 2001

Blair adopted a vegan lifestyle in 2001 and has been one of its most visible advocates in Hollywood ever since.

She co-authored Going Vegan with financial analyst Sunny J. Harris, sharing her personal story and practical guidance for others considering the transition.

At 66, she is active, health-focused, and living with the kind of energy that comes from having found a purpose larger than her own story.

What Does Linda Blair Look Like Now?

Blair turned 66 in January 2026, and photos from recent years show a woman who looks composed, grounded, and completely at ease with herself.

She is still immediately recognizable — the same blue eyes, the same warm directness — but the person looking out from photos today is clearly not performing for anyone.

Her social media presence reflects someone fully absorbed in her work: rescue dogs, advocacy campaigns, foundation updates, calls to action.

The Hollywood polish has softened into something more real, and it suits her completely.

She still attends fan conventions, where lines of Boomers and Gen Xers who were scared out of their minds in 1973 wait patiently to meet her with a warmth that clearly means something to her.

The little girl who terrified audiences in 1973 grew into one of the most quietly dedicated people in the entertainment world.

She gave her word to the animals more than 25 years ago.

She has kept it every single day since.