Jason Miller makes a priest's authority feel like hard work. His Father Damien Karras in The Exorcist gives religious doubt a human urgency, and remains the clearest reason to seek out his screen work.
Fi1m perspective
Jason Miller's Father Damien Karras speaks in a low, compassionate voice, but offering comfort seems to cost him something. In William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), he carries the strain of being the person others expect to provide reassurance. We were moved by his Karras because Miller makes that responsibility feel exhausting, even before we consider the questions of faith. His seriousness gives us a reason to listen to those questions. The performance holds our attention without requiring us to share the priest's beliefs.
His screen debut came after he had written That Championship Season (1972), but film work did not become his chief concern. He favoured regional theatre, with screen roles arriving sporadically. He played Lt. Frankie Reno in William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration (1980). Miller then directed the screen adaptation of his own play, That Championship Season (1982), and later played Coach Ara Parseghian in Rudy (1993).
Friedkin makes good use of Miller's low-key delivery beside the authority of Von Sydow's Father Lankester Merrin. Miller suggests how hard it is to offer reassurance; Von Sydow makes it easier to believe that reassurance might be justified. Their seriousness keeps the religious material from becoming decorative, though it cannot make all the shocks feel necessary. We find some of those shocks overworked, and the film benefits whenever the acting gives us something less insistent to attend to.
His reputation rests heavily on Karras, and that limits the claims we can make for his screen career. A sporadic filmography offers little basis for declaring him equally persuasive in every kind of part. It also leaves us with an unusually clear place to begin. Watch The Exorcist for Miller even if its religious questions are not yours; there is plenty to recognise in a man expected to comfort others while struggling himself.
Biography
Jason Miller, born John Anthony Miller Jr., was an American actor and playwright. He is best known for his performance as Father Damien Karras in the 1973 film The Exorcist, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and for reprising the role in The Exorcist III (1990).
Miller won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play for his play That Championship Season. He wrote and directed the 1982 film adaptation. Other film roles include Lt. Frankie Reno in The Ninth Configuration (1980), Benjamin Rasnick in Light of Day (1987), and Coach Ara Parseghian in Rudy (1993). He later served as artistic director of the Scranton Public Theatre in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Miller was born on 22 April 1939 in Queens, New York City, and died on 13 May 2001 in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
