Lawrence Lucier/Getty ImagesIn the Blair Witch Project, Heather Donahue reminded moviegoers that there's nothing more terrifying than being lost in the woods.
But little did she imagine that after shooting to fame in 1999's sleeper horror hit, she'd have a real-life scary adventure: quitting show biz to grow medical marijuana in the great outdoors.
Talk about a career change!
The erstwhile scream queen, who turns 37 today, took to her website to discuss her new memoir, GrowGirl: How My Life After The Blair Witch Project Went to Pot, tracking her frustration at the Hollywood rat race and her decision to move up to Northern California to cultivate weed.
"I wanted to change my life, see what else was out there for me, what else I might become," she writes. "So I burned most of the stuff from my life in LA (resumes, headshots, lingerie, lint) in the desert and moved to pretty little Nuggettown.
"I had no idea what to do next, and growing pot was what presented itself. I felt better about putting medical marijuana in the world than I did about about making another terrible movie."
So she moved to a community where cultivation is legal and launched her own "cannabusiness," referring to her plants as "The Girls."
It was no day in the park for Donahue, but the work did her well, both mentally and physically.
"A day of digging holes for plants, or pulling weeds, or training the dog, or adapting a shed for my hens, was a lot more satisfying than a day of volleying emails, and my body looked better for it too," she writes.
She argues that pot should be legal (it's been "intertwined with human culture for thousands of years," she writes) and says that the lifestyle agreed with her.
"I know some will argue with this, but I felt that growing marijuana did no harm, so it passed the ethical test for me. Growing pot provided time and space to find what I really wanted to do next, long-term."
What she ended up doing next, of course, was writing a book about her experiences. GrowGirl hits store shelves on Jan. 5.