LOS ANGELES – Jeannie Epper, a groundbreaking performer who performed stunts for many of the most important women in film and television of the 1970s and 1980s, including star Lynda Carter in the “Wonder Woman” TV series, has died. She was 83 years old.
Epper died of natural causes on Sunday at his home in Simi Valley, California, family spokeswoman Amanda Micheli told the Associated Press.
Considered one of the greatest in her craft — Entertainment Weekly in 2007 called her “the greatest stuntwoman who ever lived” — Epper came from a family dynasty of stuntwomen that included her parents, John and Frances Epper. Her 70-year career as a stuntman and stunt coordinator began when she was 9 years old.
“That’s all I really know other than being a mother or a grandmother,” Epper said in the 2004 documentary “Double Dare,” directed by Micheli.
His siblings, Tony, Margo, Gary, Andy and Stephanie, also worked in stunts. Steven Spielberg called them “The Flying Wallendas of Film,” according to The Hollywood Reporter, which first reported Epper’s death.
Her children Eurlyne, Richard and Kurtis, and grandson Christopher followed her into the stunt business.
She found it difficult to get many stunt jobs as a woman early on, but saw a huge increase in opportunities as women got more action-oriented roles in the late 1970s.
Her breakthrough role – and the one she would always be most associated with – was in “Wonder Woman.” Epper broke windows, knocked down doors and deflected bullets while voicing Carter on the series that ran for three seasons, from 1976 to 1979, on ABC and CBS.
Around the same time, she doubled as Lindsay Wagner in “Bionic Woman” and Kate Jackson in the original “Charlie’s Angels”.
In the 1980s, Epper famously fell in a landslide to Kathleen Turner in “Romancing the Stone” and fought for Linda Evans in her entanglements with Joan Collins on the TV show “Dynasty.”
Epper also appeared in more intellectual films, performing stunt driving for Shirley MacLaine when she played Jack Nicholson from a Corvette in the 1984 best picture Oscar winner “Terms of Endearment.”
And she was a constant presence in films directed or produced by Spielberg, including 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” 1982’s “Poltergeist” and 2002’s “Minority Report.”
“She certainly qualifies to be one of the great stunt coordinators,” Spielberg said in “Double Dare.”
Most recently, his work has appeared in “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” and “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.”
In 2007, she became the first woman to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Taurus World Stunt Awards.
She was the last survivor among her stunt brothers. Son Kurtis also predeceased her.
Her survivors include her husband Tim, children Eurlyne and Richard, five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
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This story has been corrected to show that “Wonder Woman” lasted just one season on ABC and the other two on CBS.
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