The actress from this cult horror film who couldn’t find her place in cinema and started growing marijuana
‘The Blair Witch Project’ revolutionized the horror genre with its realistic ‘found footage’ style, but didn’t catapult its cast to stardom.
The Blair Witch Project is one of those rare cultural phenomena that only come around once in a great while. Released in 1999, it was revolutionary on several levels. As one of the defining films of the found‑footage genre - shot to look like raw, recovered documentary material - it convinced a surprising number of moviegoers that what they were watching was real. The viral frenzy that followed took over TV talk shows, panel discussions, and the early internet at a scale few films had ever achieved.
It also became a global box‑office sensation, pulling in $248 million on a shoestring budget of just $60,000. But what happened to its stars?
From horror icon to medical marijuana advocate
The Blair Witch Project features only three principal actors - three film students attempting to shoot a documentary about an old legend lurking in the woods of Maryland: the Blair Witch. As that myth appears to come to life, the trio descends into a nightmare that electrified audiences at the time and still manages to unsettle new viewers today. The cast of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s breakout film consists of Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams.
Leonard managed to carve out a steady career after the film’s success, landing work across independent cinema and television. Williams wasn’t quite as fortunate, snagging smaller supporting roles here and there. But the most unusual career shift belonged to Donahue, who - like her co‑stars - played a fictionalized version of herself. After her big‑screen debut in the found‑footage landmark, Donahue launched a modest run in film and TV, earning a few notable credits before stepping away from acting.
Donahue appeared in films such as Boys and Girls, Seven and a Match, and The Morgue, and made TV appearances in The Outer Limits, Without a Trace, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. She was also part of the main cast of the miniseries Taken, earning a Saturn Award nomination for her role. And that was the end of the road - by the late 2000s, Donahue retired from acting to pursue a career in the medical marijuana industry.
Her reinvention was so complete that she legally changed her name. In 2012, she published a memoir titled Growgirl: How My Life After The Blair Witch Project Went to Pot, a playful triple‑entendre referencing her breakout film, her new life tending to cannabis plants, and the act of letting the past fade away - a wink at the unusual trajectory of her own story.
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