\n<\/p>\n
Jeannie Epper had at least 100 screen roles, maybe even 150 \u2014 no one is quite sure. But because she was a stunt double, galloping on horseback, crashing cars and kicking down doors for the stars of films and television shows, hers was not a household name.<\/p>\n
In her heyday, however, Ms. Epper was ubiquitous. She hurtled through the air most weeks as Lynda Carter\u2019s stunt double on the hit television series \u201cWonder Woman\u201d and mimed Ms. Carter\u2019s leggy lope. She tumbled through a scrum of mud and rocks as Kathleen Turner\u2019s double in the 1984 comedy-adventure film \u201cRomancing the Stone,\u201d which also starred Michael Douglas. She threw punches for Linda Evans in one of her many<\/a> ballyhooed cat fights with Joan Collins on the frothy long-running 1980s nighttime soap opera \u201cDynasty.\u201d<\/p>\n And, in what she often said was her favorite stunt \u2014 or gag, to use the industry term \u2014 Ms. Epper skidded a Corvette into a 180-degree turn<\/a> as Shirley MacLaine\u2019s character in \u201cTerms of Endearment\u201d (1983), neatly hurling Jack Nicholson\u2019s double into the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n Ms. Epper, whose bruising career spanned 70 years, died on Sunday at her home in Simi Valley, Calif. She was 83.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her daughter, Eurlyne Epper, confirmed the death. She said her mother had been ill for some time and caught an infection during a recent hospital visit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Epper was stunt royalty; her father was John Epper, a Swiss-born master horseman<\/a> who doubled in westerns for Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott and Ronald Reagan. Like her five siblings, Ms. Epper joined the family business.<\/p>\n She was just 9 when she rode a horse bareback down a cliff in her first stunt. Her first film credit, however, as The Hollywood Reporter discovered<\/a>, was \u201cCheyenne Autumn,\u201d a 1964 western directed by John Ford. And she was a regular on the western series \u201cThe Big Valley,\u201d which ran on ABC from 1965 to 1969, often doubling for Barbara Stanwyck.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWonder Woman,\u201d which debuted on ABC in 1976, was a watershed moment not just for Ms. Epper but also for all women in her industry. Despite the work of Ms. Epper and others, stunt doubling had long been mostly a man\u2019s game, with men dressing as women to do their stunts \u2014 a practice known as wigging. The series was groundbreaking for featuring a female action hero, as was another ABC series, \u201cCharlie\u2019s Angels,\u201d that same year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cActresses didn\u2019t want hairy-legged boys as doubles,\u201d Ms. Epper told Variety in 2007<\/a>. \u201cThey wanted pretty girls. It slowly started changing the order of things.\u201d<\/p>\n The rangy, 5-foot-9 Ms. Epper was used to the rough and tumble of the brotherhood that accepted her because of her father, and also because she had her own moxie. She was savvy about the sexism of the stunt world, and the movie business.<\/p>\n Zo\u00eb Bell, a New Zealand-born actor and stuntwoman whom Ms. Epper mentored, described the advice Ms. Epper gave her when she was putting together her r\u00e9sum\u00e9 for a job doubling for Uma Thurman in \u201cKill Bill: Volume 1,\u201d Quentin Tarantino\u2019s 2003 martial arts splatterfest. (Ms. Bell, a talented gymnast, had been Lucy Lawless\u2019s double during every season of \u201cXena: Warrior Princess,\u201d which was shot in New Zealand and ran from 1995 to 2001.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cShe asked me what I weighed,\u201d Ms. Bell recalled by phone. \u201cI said \u2018145-ish.\u2019 Jeannie, without missing a beat, said \u2018OK, so put 130. You look 130 and the actresses all lie.\u2019 She went on to talk about recognizing a broken system and devising new rules that one feels good about, in order to be able to keep playing the game.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Epper and Ms. Bell were the joint subjects of \u201cDouble Dare,\u201d a 2004<\/a> documentary directed by Amanda Micheli, which followed Ms. Epper as she hunted for work in her 60s and Ms. Bell, who was in her early 20s, as her career was just taking off.<\/p>\n \u201cJeannie was up against the inequity of women not getting promoted,\u201d Ms. Micheli said. \u201cThe working life span of a stunt performer is brief, like a professional athlete\u2019s. They\u2019re using their bodies, they\u2019re hitting the ground every day.<\/p>\n \u201cThe best stuntmen<\/em> go on to become stunt coordinators, or even second-unit directors, which is a powerful role on an action film,\u201d she continued. \u201cJeannie\u2019s brother Gary got those opportunities, while she just kept hitting a wall. Instead of getting to call the shots, she was hustling for small jobs here and there, and taking hits well past her prime. I saw the pain that caused her, both figuratively and literally.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Ms. Epper\u2019s youth, there were the usual mishaps. While jumping a horse off a raft in \u201cMackenna\u2019s Gold\u201d (1969), she nearly drowned when the horse floundered and flipped in the water. She was almost knocked out by Pam Grier in the 1974 blaxploitation film \u201cFoxy Brown\u201d when Ms. Grier smashed a painting over her head and sliced open her skull. She caught fire when a stunt went south in an episode of the late-1960s television series \u201cLancer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The years of stunts mostly took their toll in torn ligaments and battered joints. Not that she complained.<\/p>\n \u201cJeannie was bad-ass and a sweetheart,\u201d Ms. Bell said. \u201cA lady and one of the boys. A cowgirl and a finishing school graduate. A Christian and one of my favorite people to crack filthy jokes with.\u201d<\/p>\n Jean Luann Epper was born on Jan. 27, 1941, in Glendale, Calif., and grew up in North Hollywood. Her father served in the cavalry in his native Switzerland and moved in the 1920s to Hollywood, where he opened a riding academy and trained actors who were appearing in westerns, and also where he married Frances Robertson. He got into the stunt business when he was delivering a horse to a set and ended up doing the stunt himself \u2014 the scene involved jumping the animal over a car. He taught his three girls and three boys how to ride, how to jump and, most important, how to roll and how to fall.<\/p>\n As a young teenager, Jeannie was sent to finishing school for a few years in Switzerland \u2014 she hated it \u2014 and when she returned, she married at just 16, became a mother and went to work.<\/p>\n Her marriages to Wes Fuller, Richard Spaethe and Lee Sanders ended in divorce. In addition to her daughter, who is also a stuntwoman, Ms. Epper is survived by her husband, Tim Kimack; her son, Richard; five grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n Among her many other credits, Ms. Epper appeared in eight films produced or directed by Steven Spielberg, including \u201c1941,\u201d the 1979 slapstick comedy that imagines an alternate reality to what happened in the days after Pearl Harbor. Most of her family was cast in that film, too. In Ms. Micheli\u2019s documentary, Mr. Spielberg called the Eppers \u201cthe Flying Wallendas of film\u201d and added that in a bar fight scene in \u201c1941,\u201d \u201cthere were Eppers flying all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Epper\u2019s last role was not a stunt, exactly. In 2019, at 78, she was cast as a hostage in an episode of the ABC series \u201cThe Rookie\u201d that involved being bound, gagged and duct-taped to a chair with a shotgun strapped to her shoulder and pointed at her head.<\/p>\n