Career
White also played football for the University of Oklahoma. He would then pursue a acting career as his first film was Sands of Iwo Jima in 1949. White was in the Marine Corps and they needed extras. That was where White met John Wayne and began doubling Wayne in 1952.
He had a minor role in Starman, and has also acted in several western films and in such television series as Daniel Boone, Hunter, Magnum, P.I. and The Rockford Files, usually in tough-guy roles such as police officers or hired thugs. He has also worked in Gone in 60 Seconds, Silverado, Major League and Tron.
In 1984, White would play hockey masked psychotic, deformed serial killer Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, after the director needed a large man for the part, which White reluctantly accepted only because he needed the money. Uneasy about playing one of the most infamous murderers in screen history, White asked not to be credited on screen for his part. He would later be credited for the archive footage of him as Jason that was used in the seventh Friday film. To a certain degree he got into the spirit of things by keeping his distance from the actors playing his victims, as he didn't want them to get too friendly with him since that might have changed their performances, as they would know who he was.
On the other hand, he became infuriated with director Joseph Zito for being insensitive to the pain actress Judie Aronson was experiencing when she was out on the raft filming her nude death scene, where she developed hypothermia and actually started crying from the pain brought onto her by the cold. This infuriated White to the point that he threatened to quit if they didn't let her out of the lake, and Zito complied since he didn't have the time or resources to find another stuntman White's size. Despite his initial distaste for the role, he is considered by many fans to have been one of the best Jasons.
White was offered the role of Jason for Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, but turned them down. The roles ultimately went to stuntmen Tom Morga and C. J. Graham, respectively. White has stated that he now wishes that he had accepted the role.
Read more about this topic: Ted White (stuntman)
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)