Linda Blair

Early life

Linda Denise Blair was born on January 22, 1959, in St. Louis, Missouri, to James Frederick and Elinore (née Leitch) Blair. Blair is of Scottish ancestry. She has an older sister, Debbie, and an older brother, Jim. When Linda was two years old, her father, a Navy test pilot-turned-executive recruiter, took a job in New York City, and the family relocated to Westport, Connecticut. Her mother worked as a real-estate agent in Westport. Linda worked as a child model at age five, appearing in Sears, JCPenney and Macy's catalogues, and in over 70 commercials for Welch's grape jams and various other companies. She secured a contract at age six for a series of print advertisements in The New York Times. At the same age, she began riding horses, later becoming a trained equestrian.

Career

Blair started acting with a regular role on the short-lived Hidden Faces (1968–69) daytime soap opera. Her first theatrical film appearance was in The Way We Live Now (1970), followed by a bit part in the comedy The Sporting Club (1971). In 1972, She was selected from a field of 600 applicants for her most notable role as Regan, the possessed daughter of a famous actress, in William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973). The role earned her a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Film critic and historian Mark Clark notes that in her performance, "Blair matches [adult co-star] Ellen Burstyn note-for-note." Despite the film's critical successes, Blair received media scrutiny for her role in the film, which was deemed by some as "blasphemous", and she has said the film had significant impact on her life and career. After the film's premiere in December 1973, some reporters speculated about Blair's mental state, suggesting the filming process had resulted in her having a mental breakdown, which she denied, and she later received anonymous death threats. To combat the rumors and news media speculation surrounding her, Warner Bros. sent the then-14-year-old Blair on an international press tour in hopes of demonstrating that she was "just a normal teenager".

Blair starred opposite Kim Hunter in the controversial television film Born Innocent (1974), in which she plays a runaway teenager who is sexually abused. The film was criticized by the National Organization for Women, the New York Rape Coalition, and numerous gay and lesbian rights organizations for its depiction of female-on-female sexual abuse; the Lesbian Feminist Liberation dismissed the film, stating: "Men rape, women don't," and regarded the film as "propaganda against lesbians." After filming Born Innocent, Blair also had a supporting part as a teenaged kidney-transplant patient in the disaster film Airport 1975 (1974), which was critically panned, but a success at the box office. A steady series of job offers led her to relocate to Los Angeles in 1975, where she lived with her older sister, Debbie. Between 1975 and 1978, she had lead roles in numerous television films: Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1975), as a teenager who becomes addicted to alcohol; Sweet Hostage (1975) opposite Martin Sheen, in which she plays a kidnapping victim; and Victory at Entebbe (1976), a dramatization of a real-life hostage situation starring Anthony Hopkins and Elizabeth Taylor.

In 1977, Blair reprised her role as Regan in the Exorcist sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), garnering a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress of 1978. The film was a critical failure despite earning 30.7 million at the box office, however, and at the time was the most expensive film ever made by Warner Bros. Studios. After filming Exorcist II: The Heretic, she took a year off from acting and competed in national equestrian circuits under the pseudonym Martha McDonald. In 1978, she made a return to acting in the Wes Craven-directed television horror film Stranger in Our House (retitled Summer of Fear), based on the novel by Lois Duncan, and also with the lead role in the Canadian production Wild Horse Hank, in which she used her equestrian skills to play a college student saving wild horses from ranchers.

Charitable activities

Blair supports animal welfare. She was a vegetarian for 13 years, before becoming a vegan in 2001. In that year, she co-authored the book Going Vegan!. In 2004, she founded the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to rescue and rehabilitate abused, neglected, and mistreated animals and provide them with needed pet care.

She has also worked with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Feed the Children, Variety, the Children's Charity, and other organizations, as well as advocating for teen HIV/AIDS awareness. She is on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society operations board of advisors. In August 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, she travelled to Mississippi and saved 51 abandoned dogs.

Personal life

At age 15, Blair dated Australian singer Rick Springfield, 25 years old at the time, whom she met during a concert at the Whisky a Go Go. She also dated Deep Purple and Trapeze bassist Glenn Hughes, and Neil Giraldo, guitarist and future husband of Pat Benatar. Between late 1979 and mid-1981, she dated Styx guitarist Tommy Shaw. She also dated Jim Dandy Mangrum of the band Black Oak Arkansas. In the early 1990s, she was in a relationship with actor Wings Hauser.

In a 1982 interview accompanying a topless pictorial in Oui, Blair revealed that she found Rick James "very sexy". James, who was shown the piece by a member of his retinue, returned the compliment through an intermediary. They dated for two years, and James wrote his hit song "Cold Blooded" about her. Speaking on their relationship in his book Glow: The Autobiography of Rick James, he said: "Linda was incredible. A free spirit. A beautiful mind. A mind-blowing body. She liked getting high and getting down as much as I did. We posed topless for a photograph that showed up everywhere. We didn't care. We were doing our own thing our own way. It was a love affair that I hoped would last. It didn't." James revealed that he found out Blair had been pregnant by him, and had an abortion without his knowledge.

On December 20, 1977, at 18 years old, she was arrested for drug possession and conspiracy to sell drugs. She pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of conspiracy to possess cocaine, in exchange for three years' probation. She was also required to make at least twelve major public appearances to tell young people about the dangers of drug abuse.

She believes in the paranormal.

In 2014, Blair revealed that she was treated for an umbilical hernia. As of 2015, she lived in Coto de Caza, California.

In a December 2025 interview with Billy Corgan, Blair stated that she had been diagnosed with Graves' disease in 2023, after experiencing numerous symptoms which were discovered to be stemming from a near-fatal thyroid storm.

In August 2026, Los Angeles County officials executed an inspection warrant at Blair's Southern California property as part of an investigation into a reported kennel operation; Blair said the visit concerned administrative paperwork rather than the animals' welfare, and no dogs were removed.

Filmography