Where Is Linda Blair Now?
Linda Blair turns 67 on January 22, 2026 — but for a lot of us, she will always be Regan MacNeil, the wide-eyed child at the center of 1973’s The Exorcist. But Blair’s story did not stop with that one iconic role. Over the decades, she kept popping up in unexpected places and even built a successful second career around her passion for animals. In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look at her career and find out what she’s been up to now.
How did Linda Blair begin her career?
Long before she became a household name, Blair, who was born in 1959 in Missouri, was a child model. Her family relocated to Connecticut when she was two, and she began an acting career in New York City, appearing in catalog and TV commercials. She began acting on TV soap operas at age 9, and had her first film role in 1970’s The Way We Live Now.
In 1972, she was cast as Regan in William Friedkin‘s The Exorcist, a role that made her internationally famous while she was still a teenager. The performance earned Blair a Golden Globe win and an Academy Award nomination. After The Exorcist, she starred in highly discussed TV films like Born Innocent and Sarah T., Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, and also appeared in big studio films like Airport 1975.
United Artists/Everett Collection
By the late ’70s and into the ’80s, Blair’s career took a turn toward B movie cult classics. Titles like Roller Boogie, Hell Night, Chained Heat and Savage Streets became part of her long-running reputation as a genre fixture. Blair never truly vanished; she just became selective. She made a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in Scream in the ’90s, and later became a regular presence for spooky season viewers as the host of Scariest Places on Earth.
Indican Pictures/Everett Collection
What is Linda Blair doing now?
In 2022, she appeared on The Masked Singer as the “Scarecrow” and used the platform to spotlight her animal charity work. Then, in 2023, she made a cameo in The Exorcist: Believer, stepping back into Regan’s world in a brief but headline-making return that reminded audiences she is still part of the franchise’s story. Today, she regularly appears at fan events and conventions celebrating the film and its legacy.
In 2004, she founded the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation, a nonprofit focused on rescuing, rehabilitating, and finding homes for animals, alongside education and outreach. In recent interviews tied to her return to The Exorcist, she has described rescue work as central to her adult life, framing it as purpose-driven, ongoing work rather than a side project. In recent years, she has also been working on her health. She confirmed in a 2025 interview that she had been diagnosed with Graves’ disease in 2023 after suffering from a near-fatal thyroid storm.
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