Daveigh Chase

The Girl in the Well and the Disney Experiment

Daveigh Chase was eleven years old when she climbed into a tank of dirty water to play Samara Morgan in The Ring. It was 2002, and Gore Verbinski's film was going for an uncomfortable physicality that the Las Vegas girl nailed from the very first casting. And she did it without saying a single word on screen, yet still managed to keep eight million viewers from watching television for weeks.

That same year her voice was heard in the complete opposite of darkness. While she was terrifying audiences in theaters, she was voicing the lead character of Lilo & Stitch for Disney. It was a strange duality for a child actress who had just landed in the industry. But her move into voice work was no accident, since Chase had already worked a year earlier on the English version of Spirited Away.

She was an absolute anomaly.

In 2003, she won the award for Best Villain at the MTV Movie Awards. She beat out actors of the caliber of Daniel Day-Lewis and Colin Farrell in the vote. That golden popcorn-shaped statuette seemed to be the start of an unstoppable career under the spotlight of the major studios. But Chase's career soon veered toward the fringes of cult cinema and independent productions.

From Donnie Darko Cult Status to HBO's Polygamy Drama

Before the world knew Samara, Chase had already played Samantha Darko in the 2001 film Donnie Darko. Her role was supporting but enough for Richard Kelly's fans to take notice of her. So in 2009, producers decided she would be the absolute lead in the sequel titled S. Darko.

The movie was a disaster with both critics and audiences. The script tried to recapture the mystique of the original film without success, and Chase's career took its first serious hit. But television offered her a solid haven over five seasons. Between 2006 and 2011, she played Rhonda Volmer on HBO's Big Love.

Her character was a manipulative young woman in a polygamous community in Utah. She shot 32 episodes in which she showed she could carry complex storylines alongside veterans such as Bill Paxton. The problem was that after the series ended in 2011, major roles began to dry up dramatically.

And the industry doesn't forgive silence.

Administrative Silence and Police Records

The second decade of the 2000s was a period of minor projects and fleeting appearances. In 2012 she voiced a role in the video game Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, and in 2015 she appeared in the thriller Killer Crush. But headlines stopped focusing on her talent and shifted to her private life away from film sets.

In 2017, Los Angeles police arrested her after she left a dying man at the entrance of a hospital. Although she was not a suspect in the death, the incident irreversibly damaged her public image with casting agencies. A year later, in 2018, she was arrested again for possession of banned substances during a routine check.

She tried to revive her music career with a band called The Kids. However, the project never produced a studio album or any notable tour. Her appearances at horror film conventions became her main link to a crowd of fans who still remembered her from coming out of a TV screen.

In 2016 she recorded her last credited work as a voice actress in the video game Let It Die. Since then, her profile in the actors' union has not recorded any new productions or contracts tied to the Hollywood industry. Chase's professional trail comes to a sudden halt with a final tally of zero projects signed in the current decade.