Rowan Morrison isn’t the only girl whom Howie encounters on Summerisle, nor the creepiest. The latter title belongs to Daisy (Lesley Mackie). When Howie enters the Summerisle schoolhouse and notices an empty desk (Rowan’s), he saunters over and finds a beetle tied to a nail by a piece of string.

Daisy, sitting at the desk next to Rowan’s, observes with sadistic joy across her face: “Little old beetle goes round and round, always the same way you see, until it ends up right up tied to the nail. Poor old thing.” In case you don’t get it — the beetle represents Howie, but the sergeant himself doesn’t recognize this. Despite playing a small school girl, Mackie was a college graduate in her early 20s when she filmed “The Wicker Man.” She also had a second job on set; instructing Ekland on how to speak with a Scottish accent (which ended up all being for naught).

Mackie is still alive today and evidently proud of her small role in “The Wicker Man” (she’s admitted that because most of the cast has died, that means a lot of the press attention falls on her). As recently as 2023, she’s given interviews about her role in the film (specifically with the BBC). She also returned as Daisy for Hardy’s 2011 sequel, “The Wicker Tree.”

Mackie doesn’t have many film credits, but she kept acting onstage after “The Wicker Man.” In 1986, she won an Olivier Award for her performance as Judy Garland in “Judy,” a play written by her late husband Terry Wale.