Beyond Blair Witch

INTERVIEW

Talk about overnight success (or failure, depending on how you look at it): “In just the last year, I’ve gone from being an office temp to Worst Actress of 1999,” Heather Donahue quips during a recent interview. Her Razzie-winning performance as the obnoxious ringleader in the low-budget blockbuster The Blair Witch Project “won” out over the truly awful likes of Melanie Griffith, Milla Jovovich and Sharon Stone, but the 25-year-old Donahue seems to be taking it all in good-humored stride. “Actually, the Razzie people still haven’t sent me my trophy and I’m starting to get a little pissed. I’ve already cleared off a place for it on my mantle and everything,” she says.

A Pennsylvania native and honors graduate of Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, Donahue relocated to New York, where she spent a couple of years working with an improv comedy troupe. As she remembers it with a smile, “We’d perform twice a week out in Washington Square Park. Once, Janeane Garofalo was out there walking her dogs, and we were so excited because she actually laughed at us.”

In fact, Donahue’s improvisational background gave her the edge when it came to landing the lead in Blair Witch. “I knew there wasn’t any money involved, but I actually rallied to get that part,” she acknowledges. “It was an incredibly exciting opportunity, building a character from scratch like that and getting to basically improvise the whole movie.” (Some 150 million box-office dollars later, Donahue sidesteps when asked if she received any sort of retroactive cut of the profits. “A wealth of experience, that’s what we got. A wealth of experience,” she coyly responds.)

Her first post-Blair Witch project is Boys and Girls (opening June 16), the latest in an utterly interchangeable series of romantic comedies starring wooden heartthrob Freddie Prinze, Jr. (She’s All That, Down to You). Donahue is cast in the supporting role of a no-nonsense coed and a temporary distraction for Prinze, who’s on the inevitable path to living happily ever after with leading lady Claire Forlani. Jason Biggs (American Pie) co-stars as Prinze’s zany roommate.

“I have to admit, working with a studio like Miramax was a nice change-of-pace from Blair Witch. What wasn’t to like? We were in San Francisco. I actually got to bathe and wash my hair. They had drivers to take me back and forth to the set. I had my own trailer, for crying out loud, and there were four different kinds of salad on the craft-services table at lunch. Oh, my God, you should see all the food! I don’t get it, because then everybody wants their actresses to weigh like 100 pounds,” she laughs.

Donahue says she was attracted to the Boys and Girls role because it was a startling about-face from her Blair Witch character. “I loved that this gave me a chance to be funny, to play one of those all-American go-getters who’s about as far removed as could be from the way I really was in college. I was always more existential and brooding, more the Ally Sheedy type from The Breakfast Club, you know?” ??