Trivia: An unknown actress with experience in the theater and improv, Heather Donahue jump-started her movie career as one of the three ill-fated filmmakers in the 1999 horror sensation The Blair Witch Project. After studying acting, doing theater in her hometown of Philadelphia, and appearing on stage in London and New York, Donahue's improv skills were put to unusual use in The Blair Witch Project. Cast as the pushy director of the eponymous documentary, Donahue, along with costars Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams, only received brief instructions from directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick about what their character were to do, and took turns wielding the film's 16mm and video cameras. Shot on a minute budget, screened at midnight at the Sundance Film Festival, and inventively marketed as a "real" documentary with an Internet site detailing the legend, The Blair Witch Project became an unexpected summer blockbuster. The ultra-low tech visual aesthetic, unseen terrors, and the cast's palpable -- and occasionally genuine -- fear petrified audiences and spawned the almost-inevitable comic parodies. Donahue's tear-stained, close-up apology/confessional in particular inspired numerous take-offs. After her initial cinematic success, Donahue returned to multiplex screens as part of the supporting cast in the teen-targeted college romance Boys and Girls (2000).

Trivia: Joshua Leonard melded his prior indie film experience on- and off-camera and achieved unexpected fame in the low-budget horror blockbuster The Blair Witch Project (1999). After doing theater as a child, Leonard worked in production, as well as acting, in independent and experimental films in New York. Cast as the steadfast cameraman Josh in The Blair Witch Project, Leonard balanced shooting the film's 16mm footage with improvising the increasingly-eerie turn of events, along with fellow cast members Heather Donahue and Michael Williams -- according to directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez's fleeting instructions. Savvily-marketed through an Internet site as a "documentary" about an actual, lethal legend after its buzz-generating midnight debut at the Sundance Film Festival, The Blair Witch Project became an enormous summer hit, frightening audiences with its all-too-real sense of impending -- if unseen -- danger. Fans expressed relief that Leonard and his cohorts had not in fact come to their ends in the Maryland woods. After his sudden exit from The Blair Witch Project, Leonard continued working on independent films and moved to L.A. He continued to work in smaller, independent films and appear on the festival circuits promoting his work. Leonard starred in Higher Ground (2011), the directorial debut of Vera Farmiga, and also made his own feature film directorial debut with The Lie. In 2014, he appeared in If I Stay and The Town That Dreaded Sunset and prominent guest roles on Togetherness and Bates Motel. In 2015, he joined the series Heartbreaker as a series regular.

Trivia: A native of Brooklyn, NY, actor Michael Kenneth Williams fell into a typecast with repeated portrayals of hoods, toughs, and career criminals from project to project. Williams entered acting courtesy of professional dancing, which he began at the age of 22; in that arena, his unique and individualistic moves caught the attention of producers and landed him in a string of music videos. Williams subsequently decided to pursue classical training as an actor, which he received via participation in the National Black Theater Company and New York's La' MaMA Theatre Company, though his breakthrough arrived at the hands of the late gangster rapper Tupac Shakur, who discovered Williams and cast him as his own little brother in the Julien Temple-directed urban crime drama Bullet (1995). Work for Martin Scorsese followed, with a minor role in the grueling psychodrama Bringing Out the Dead (1999), though Williams scored much broader acclaim and exposure via participation in HBO's popular crime drama series The Wire, where he played stick-up man Omar Little for multiple seasons. Williams then moved back into features with a supporting turn as Devin in actor-turned-director Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone (2007), then starred opposite Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron in director John Hillcoat's post-apocalyptic thriller The Road (2008).

Trivia: Kim Richards began her acting career as a child, appearing on 70's TV shows like Nanny and the Professor, Here We Go Again, and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, as well as movies like The Car and Escape to Witch Mountain. Richards retired from acting in the early 80's, but returned to the business as an adult, appearing in Black Snake Moan and a remake of her childhood hit, Race to Witch Mountain.