Blair Witch actress resurfaces after quitting Hollywood after movie to live completely different life
An actor who starred in the iconic horror movie The Blair Witch Project has resurfaced years after she stepped away from Hollywood.
Heather Donahue was one of the stars in the genre-defining 1999 movie.
The plot follows three film students who are setting out to find the 'Blair Witch', and filming their exploits as they go.
But as the trio move deeper into the forest, more scary and disturbing things start to happen, coming to a terrifying conclusion.
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On paper, The Blair Witch Project did not have the indications of the enormous success it would find.
It may have been a low budget found footage movie with no big special effects and no big celebrities attached to it, but the movie captured the imagination of audiences and found remarkable success, being credited with popularising the 'found footage' genre of horror, though it wasn't the first film to use the technique.
Heather starred alongside Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, who were all playing fictionalised versions of themselves.
Despite the film's success, within 10 years Heather decided to leave Hollywood and grow medical marijuana.
In a dramatic departure, Heather previously shared with the Philadelphia Inquirer that she had taken 'all my stuff into the desert related to my acting career and burned it all'.
One thing survived the flames though, the blue ski cap that she wears in the movie's poster.
She said: "I figured if things got really bad, I could always sell it on eBay."
In a Q&A that was shared on her website, Heather explained why she had made the decision to step away from acting.
"The acting projects I was lucky enough to work on weren't always things that I felt good about putting out into the world," she said.
"I didn't see that getting better as I got older. I wanted to change my life, see what else was out there for me, what else I might become."
After torching all of her acting possession except the hat, Heather told Reuters that she had gone to a 'meditation retreat'.
"I met this guy there who lived in this town that I had been to several years prior," she said.
"He sat down next to me, invited me to a hot spring, invited me to his house in this town.
"And I said, 'What do you do for work?' Because that was really the hold-up for me moving there.
"I had no idea what people did for work. And he grew pot and I said, 'Well, let's check it out'."
Heather has also spoken about her involvement in an upcoming reboot of The Blair Witch Project in a post on social media.
"There seems to be some willful confusion about my involvement with the reboot, given the use of my image and the quote above from James Wan. I want to clarify that I am not participating," she wrote.
"I was offered an agreement that, for me personally, raised difficult long-term questions about rights, future technological use of identity and voice, the ability to speak freely, and compensation. Ultimately, it just wasn't something I felt comfortable signing.
"I genuinely wish everyone involved well. But preserving my autonomy mattered more to me."
Topics: US News, Film, TV and Film, Celebrity
Kit Roberts