Actually, you started acting long before "The Exorcist," right?

Yes, I started when I was 5 in New York doing modeling and commercials. The goal was to work and save my money to go to school and be a veterinarian, but also, I wanted to buy a horse. That was the first driving force when I was very young. [Laughs.] I was like, "Horsey! I want a horsey!" And I still have the horsey in the backyard. Not the same one, mind you.

That would be a feat.

Yeah. Stuffed! Like Trigger! [Laughs.]

So when I was 13, I said to my mother that I wanted to quit and really buckle down because I'd bought my first horse and was on my third pony and I was like, "I worked hard and got what I wanted and now I want to just really apply myself to my studies." She said yes, that was fine and we just had to finish off a few jobs. And that's when "The Exorcist" came along. If it had been just a few more weeks, I would not have been the girl in the movie, because we were done.

Do you regret it?

No, because if I had achieved my dreams of becoming a vet, I would be in a town somewhere having a clientele, let's say, of 500 clients. This way, "The Exorcist" gives me a platform around the world. Out of curiosity, people will always come see me and listen to what I have to say about animal and human health issues. The film allows me that platform. So that's the big picture. That's a big deal, and I know it. For that, I'm grateful.

Plus, it has offered me the opportunity to travel around the world and meet people I'd never have met. So, no, it's nothing but good. Though it is a hard cross to bear on a daily basis that other people assume that it has been a difficult journey and wonder why I made the film.

In "The Exorcist" and the TV movies that you mentioned, you were dealing with some really strong stuff at a pretty young age. How did that affect you?

It made me grow up sooner. But that's what's so funny, I'm probably younger at heart now than I ever was then. I went through a lot of adult issues at such a young age that they're over. So now, it's like, OK, I get it, and the next 40 years that I have on this planet, they're mine, nobody else's. A lot of people in their 40s and 50s, they wish they'd done something else and go through a midlife crisis. I've already been through it 10 times. Now I know who I am. I'm very secure. As long as you keep your health and you keep a job and you've got good friends and you're doing things that you are proud of, you can feel good about yourself.

What are you proudest of in your career?

I would say I'm proud of the work that I did in "The Exorcist." I now realize: "Good for me. I did my job. Good for me."

Have you ever taken any time away from the business?

I took one year when I was 18. I was exhausted and I just wanted to ride my horses and pursue that. I wanted to be in the Olympics and every time I would get good horses and get to a level where I was getting somewhere, I'd get a job. Then months would pass and I'd have to kind of start again. I was very serious about my dreams, but then I realized, well, gee, I have to work in order to support a very expensive sport. So I went back to work.

The Olympics?

I used to train hunters and jumpers. In my 20s, I finally got all my great horses and was doing very well. I mean, I competed since I was 15. It's a very competitive sport, very expensive. The horses cost up to a million dollars and the projects -- I wasn't making a million, you know. So I had to make a choice in my middle 20s about what to do, whether to go professional as a rider and trainer or to come back and give the same amount of love and compassion and desire to my career as I had to my athletic life, which I kept so private. And that's what I did. But the '80s were very difficult for women in the industry. I just kept working through, but there weren't a lot of great jobs.

Do you think the '70s were better for women?

Well, I can't speak for women at that time, but I think for a teenager the roles that I did were such breakout roles because they'd never done anything like that for a teenager before. It'd always been, like, the teenager was the secondary character, not the main character. And in the '50s and '60s, you certainly would never talk about big issue stuff. So the '70s were the first time that they brought things out of the closet with kids.

Can you see a child actor today being asked to do the kinds of things you did in "The Exorcist"?

Well, they wanted to redo "The Exorcist" a few years back, I think in 1997. They asked if I would help with the casting and work on the set with the kid, and I said, "What are you, nuts? No! Don't ever subject another child to that. It's too difficult." I was blessed. I was strong. Certainly I struggled with all the issues, trying to understand why I was attacked by the Catholics for a long time. Now they realize that it's their own church that had all the secrets. It had nothing to do with me. But at the time, I was the bad egg. Hey, I was just doing my job. But I would never do that to another child. No.

Did you struggle with any emotional aftereffects?

No, I think I was really lucky. I was prepared very well. But you make choices and hope you're strong enough to deal with them. Everybody goes through difficult journeys in this life. Whether you lose a child, whether someone gets ill with a disease, whether somebody goes through great financial loss, whether somebody makes a bad decision, gets taken advantage of, is not born into a situation that's easy to make something of themselves, everybody will have a challenge. That is what life's about.

I was noticing on your Web site that you, like your governor-elect, once did a Oui magazine shoot. And you posed nude.

Oh, that. Well, that's something that, in our business, women do at some point in their careers. And it still exists today. I mean, God, look at Britney Spears! I mean, holy moley! But really, it's kind of part of it, whether it's Playboy or Oui or any of those. The point of doing Oui was to show people that I was an adult, that I was grown up, that I wasn't a 14-year-old kid anymore -- and there was a good article that accompanied it. And you know, I would rather see nudity any day than violence. To me, when violence and killing become entertainment, the state of our nation is in trouble.

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