Stuntman’s Photographs Added to Pepperdine Collection

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Chuck Waters and Martin Sheen, 1979.

Chuck Waters, a veteran Hollywood stuntman who worked in the industry for more than 40 years, has shared his personal photographs, correspondence and stories from his time working in the movie industry with the Pepperdine Library.

The collection was added to the Pepperdine Digital Collections this month.

Waters, born in 1934, worked on more than 130 films in his career, including blockbusters “The Exorcist” and the Indiana Jones trilogy. The Pepperdine collection holds photographs from dozens of films shot between 1966 and 1999.

The photographs depict stunts as they were accomplished before the advent of green screens, computer-generated imagery (CGI), and even before the aid of wires. According to the Pepperdine Library, Waters was “set on fire, rolled in crashing cars, dropped from helicopters, thrown off horses and hurled down stairs.”

“We, my fellow stuntmen and stuntwomen, had to figure out how to do our stunts as safe as possible so that we could live to see another day of stunts—as dangerous as they were. And sometimes they did not get to see the next day!” Waters told Pepperdine.

The digital collection can be viewed publicly online here.