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 seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)