Heather Donahue

Though she may never eat a Powerbar again, Heather Donahue claims she would "do it again in a heartbeat," subject herself to the guerilla filmmaking methods of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, co-directors of the surprise blockbuster "The Blair Witch Project" (1999). Chosen for her improvisational ability following five call-back auditions, she found herself, along with fellow actors Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams, smack in the middle of a conceptual piece, filming the raw footage that would become "Blair Witch" after a two-day crash course on how to load and operate both 16mm and Hi-8 video cameras. Equipping their charges with Global Positioning System (GPS) headsets, the directors deposited them in the Maryland woods and led them to predetermined sites where the exercise in first-person terror would play out. The shoot covered eight days, and the actors really roughed it, camping out and sometimes having their sleep interrupted by the production team creating drama for them to capture.