Father Damien Karras has charmed and haunted audiences in the 50 years since The Exorcist’s release. The priest-psychiatrist represented the uneasy rapprochement between psychology and Catholicism, which persists half a century later.
Jason Miller, whose pensive stare and dark features are immediately evocative of “the Exorcist priest,” won the role by accident, after director William Friedkin stumbled upon his work as a playwright. Friedkin had considered several high-profile stars, including Jack Nicholson and Paul Newman, to play Karras, but he settled on Stacy Keach, an Off Broadway actor who a year earlier played a breakout role as a Texas vice cop in The New Centurions.
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