'Paranormal Activity' is pair's ticket to film success

HOLLYWOOD - Just a few weeks ago, Katie Featherston was balancing plates brimming with spaghetti and baked ravioli, working as a waitress at a local Buca di Beppo restaurant. Micah Sloat was a struggling actor/computer programmer living in North Hollywood. Now, they're watching the micro-budget horror movie they filmed three years ago develop into a full-blown phenomenon.

The two play the young couple haunted by a spectral force in the breakout hit Paranormal Activity. The suspenseful supernatural thriller, reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project, has become one of the year's biggest success stories. Made for $15,000, Paranormal was the No. 1 movie at the box office last weekend, taking in more than $21 million. And it has earned an astounding $62.5 million since its limited release late last month.

Featherston and Sloat? They're just as surprised as everyone else.

"When the movie opened, we hid behind a tree across the street from the ArcLight [theater] in Hollywood," Featherston, 27, said as she sat in a booth at Buca di Beppo, where she frequently was interrupted by former coworkers. "The line was huge. I couldn't believe it. It's something you hope for but never, ever expect will happen. I wanted to run over and say, 'Hey, I'm in that!' . . . but we couldn't."

In an attempt to keep the mystery surrounding the movie's story intact, the studio and the film's director, Oren Peli, an Israeli-born video-game designer with no formal film training, kept the two actors relatively secluded - only recently have they started to do media interviews.

The tactic seems to have worked. After the movie's nationwide release, the film's startling ending provoked a spike in Internet searches by people apparently determined to learn whether the facts as presented were true.

It's all been a big leap for Sloat. The 28-year-old, who grew up in Westport, Conn., and moved to Los Angeles in 2005 to pursue acting, was on the verge of ditching the unstable career and giving up on his dream. Featherston, a Texas native, graduated from Southern Methodist University and also moved to Los Angeles in 2005.

When the two auditioned for the spookfest in 2006, they weren't expecting to be part of a box-office record-breaker. There wasn't even a script.

"I remember being in the waiting room and these girls would just kind of walk out shaking their head," Featherston said. "I walked into the room and [Peli] said, 'Why do you think your house is haunted?' Just like that. Boom! So I just threw myself into the character."

And that's exactly what Peli was searching for in casting the characters who would later be called Katie and Micah (yes, he used their actual names).

"The whole point is for it to feel natural," Peli said in a phone interview. "I didn't want actors who looked like they were acting. I wanted it to feel real, so I didn't want there to be a script. I wanted the audience to think they were watching real life."

The actors, who were paid $500 each for their roles, often put in 14- to 18-hour days. The little sleep they managed to squeeze in took place in the "haunted" house.

Sloat and Featherston - who look much as they did three years ago (although on this day Featherston is a bit more glam with the help of an on-site makeup artist) - don't seem fazed by the frenzy. Featherston quit waitressing. Sloat hinted he would leave the tech industry. "Auditions are coming at us like bullets," Sloat said. "It's better than winning all the lotteries at once."