Heath Ledger playing the role as Joker possibly killed him. Martin Sheen in “Apocalypse Now” nearly killed him. Joaquin Phoenix acting like a weirdo for a year might have killed his career.

Linda Blair, on the other hand, naively had her reputation set for the rest of her life, without any real control, with this little film you might have heard of, it is this horror film called, um, “The Exorcist.”

Well, to start, as much as she likes to deny this, she’s never fully recovered from the role. She will simply always be known as Regan, the little girl who shoved a crucifix in a certain part that shall not be mentioned and did the whole backwards spider crawal down the stairwell thing.

Even though the stairwell thing was not done by Blair herself, the lines spoken were. Only to be dubbed over, but hey, the other actors needed something to work with right, so why not make the young innocent girl say those lines?

Anyway, to the parents reading this right now, I’m curious, even for, I don’t know, let’s say a million dollars…would you let your child do it? Me either. I wouldn’t even let my dog do it. Then again, he’s more important than children.

Moving on…

Regardless, Blair had her life chosen for her because of this movie. The poor teenager even received death threats. Let us take a look at how that has worked out for her.

Great starting point! She received an Oscar nomination for playing the sickest, most disturbed person in movie history. I have to be honest, she totally deserved it. However, it’s all downhill from there.

No more Oscar nods. She was always…that possessed girl. She did make a return to Regan in the critically-panned forgotten sequel to “The Exorcist.”

Boy, not only did that movie suck, but it further associated her with the character. Not a smart move, but, again, I’m sure her parents were just so proud…of those mansions they were buying.

Let’s face it, she was stereotyped and didn’t know how to respond. The poor girl was barely hitting puberty and she was forever associated with the character that spit pea soup and spun her head.

As she matured, her career portfolio usually ends playing witches or some type of weirdo in direct-to-video films, including soft-core porn.

In an interview with IGN over a decade ago, she said about the role, “Of course that changed my entire life. I don't think there are very many people that will have the experience of sitting in this room, doing a job, and the next thing you know you’ve been on every television camera around the world, and people are frightened of you.

They don't know what to make of you. I think people seemed to believe when they saw me that they might be becoming possessed. That is the look in their eyes.

They were frightened of me. And no matter what I said or did, it didn’t change.”

I suppose it was hard to be normal or get a date in high school after that. To this day she is unmarried, without kids. I’m sorry Linda. It’s not your fault.

You had no idea. But hey, you have made it on my top five list and really, isn’t that all that matters?