Heather O'Rourke

Heather O'Rourke occupies a uniquely tender place in my memory of cinema. As Carol Anne in Poltergeist, she anchored one of the most iconic horror films ever made before most children learn to read fluently, and her presence, luminous and eerily calm, is the reason the film still works decades later. Her death in 1988 at just twelve years old remains one of Hollywood's genuine tragedies, and I think it is why audiences hold her memory so protectively. What I take from her brief career is how much a single performance can outlive its performer; she has been gone far longer than she lived, yet she has never left the screen.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Heather O'Rourke

Name (Japanese)

ヘザー・オルーク

Reading

へざー・おるーく

Born

December 27, 1975 – February 1, 1988

Origin

San Diego, California, United States

Occupation

film actor / television actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Rabbit

Filmography / notable works

• Official sitehttp://www.heatherorourke.net
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather%20O'Rourke
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%98%E3%82%B6%E3%83%BC%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AA%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AF
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q230965

Tags

• California
• film actor
• television actor

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.