Pamelyn Ferdin voiced Fern Arable, the little girl who raises Wilbur the pig, in the 1973 animated film "Charlotte's Web". Ferdin was considered for the role of Regan MacNeil, the demon-possessed girl in the 1973 William Friedkin film "The Exorcist", but casting directors decided she was too well-known and cast the then-less-familiar actress Linda Blair. She withdrew from acting in the mid-1980s, but did voice the character of Shelley Kelley in the Kids' WB series "Detention" in 1999. After leaving her job as a public relations director in the mid-1990s, Ferdin began working for the Center for Animal Care and Control in
The Exorcist (film series) the screen before.” However, Vincent Canby, writing in "The New York Times", dismissed "The Exorcist" as “a chunk of elegant occultist claptrap…[A] practically impossible film to sit through…it establishes a new low for grotesque special effects...” Andrew Sarris complained that “Friedkin’s biggest weakness is his inability to provide enough visual information about his characters…whole passages of the movie’s exposition were one long buzz of small talk and name droppings…"The Exorcist" succeeds on one level as an effectively excruciating entertainment, but on another, deeper level it is a thoroughly evil film.” Writing in "Rolling Stone", Jon Landau felt the film was,