Jamie Lee Curtis, before giving her groundbreaking first performance in 1978 Halloweenwas also initially offered to give an audition for the popular horror film, The Exorcist.
Producer Ray Stark wanted 12-year-old Curtis to audition for the role of possessed youngster Regen MacNeil in the classic 1973 horror film, but his late mother Janet Leigh turned down the offer.
THE Weird Friday The actress recalled how Stark called her mother to propose.
She opened, “He called my mom and said, ‘Hey, I’m producing the movie of the book The Exorcist. Will you let Jamie audition for that?'”
“And at the time, I was probably 12 years old and I was cute and kind of sassy and I had a certain personality, and I’m sure he saw me at a party and he said, ‘Oh, she’d be funny.’
Jamie revealed the The Drew Barrymore Show that her mother simply said “no”, thinking that her daughter should experience her childhood first.
She explained: “My mother really wanted me to have – thank God – a childhood, which I understand you didn’t have. You didn’t have that option.”
Today, the 67-year-old is grateful that her mother rejected the offer to play the possessed character on screen.
Later the role was played by Linda Blair, who played it in two films.
It looks like Scarlett Johansson has signed on for the upcoming reboot version of The Exorcist, which is directed by Mike Flanagan.
