Child's Prey

The Ring: Merrick Morton

Daveigh Chase

CLASSIFICATIONS Not-So-Friendly Ghost (The Ring); Freakishly Precocious (Big Love)

CHARACTERS In The Ring (top), she's Samara Morgan, a girl who suffers unspeakable abuse. And on HBO's series Big Love, she's Ronda Volmer (bottom right), a manipulative teen who lives on a polygamist compound and is betrothed to a septuagenarian (Harry Dean Stanton, center).

CHILD'S PLAY Turns out Samara's brutal past is the key to the deadly videotape of The Ring. And on Big Love, Ronda — wearing her odd Little House on the Prairie-ish getups — lurks about eavesdropping and causing havoc for members of her very extended family.

CHILLING MOMENT On an episode of Big Love, Ronda, her look of calm entitlement slowly morphing into rage, assaults an official at a drama competition she's been cut from. As for The Ring, well, admit it: You jumped back out of your seat when Samara crawled out of that videotape.

WHY SHE SCARES US On the big and small screens, Chase has freaked us out in very different roles, using her movements and voice (check out her unsettling hymns on Big Love) to maximum effect.