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) her to be hospitalized and ultimately taken out of consideration. Denise Nickerson, who played Violet Beauregarde in "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," was considered, but the material troubled her parents too much, and they pulled her out of consideration. Anissa Jones, known for her role as Buffy in "Family Affair," auditioned for the role, but she too was rejected, for much the same reason as Ferdin. The part went instead to Blair, a relative unknown until the film's success. The question of whether or not such a young actress, even a talented one, could carry the film on her