Don't try this at home, kids: University Place native now a Hollywood stuntman

Flying off roofs, running through flames, crashing cars. It’s every little boy’s dream.

For University Place native Justin Sundquist, it’s a career. He has spent the last 14 years taking punches and poundings for Hollywood stars.

Currently, Sundquist, 37, is the stunt double for “Hawaii Five-O” star Alex O’Loughlin. The revamp of the iconic 1970s television series follows a fictional state police unit run by Detective Steve McGarrett, played by O’Loughlin. The role was originated by actor Jack Lord.

McGarrett utters the catchphrase made famous by Lord, “Book ’em, Danno,” after subduing a criminal in a knock-down fight or a leap off a car. But it isn’t O’Loughlin who’s putting himself at risk for cracked ribs and broken teeth. It’s Sundquist.

During a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where he was working on a new TV pilot while on a short break from “Five-O,” Sundquist related what led him to life on the receiving end of fists and feet.

“Unfortunately, I’ve always been known as the ground pounder – the guy who takes all the hard hits,” Sundquist said.

Sundquist said his interest in stunts began at an early age, a fact confirmed by his older brother Aaron.

“We used to do some really stupid stuff,” Aaron said.

Growing up in University Place, they made Titlow Beach their backyard and the nearby railroad equipment their playthings. That included riding moving trains and jumping from car to car. “Justin used to outdo everyone else,” his brother said. “There was stuff he could do that nobody else could do.”

Aaron Sundquist said that while he and his junior high-age friends would jump mid-height from train trestles into the Sound, Justin would jump from the top. “He had no fear. He’ll do anything.”

Today, as a professional, Justin Sundquist looks back on those boyhood stunts with dismay. “(It’s) nuts. For one, you don’t know what’s in the water. You don’t do that as stuntmen.”

AFTER HIGH SCHOOL

After graduating from Curtis High School in 1992, Sundquist played football at Washington State University for a year. He eventually transferred to Central Washington University in Ellensburg, where he roomed with childhood friend Beau Baldwin and continued his stunt-like antics.

“He would see a bush and do a front flip over it,” Baldwin recalls.

Baldwin, now the head football coach at Eastern Washington University, said Sundquist would head-butt mailboxes and once somersaulted down an escalator at a Reno casino.

Sundquist graduated from Central in 1996 with a psychology degree, but didn’t want to pursue a graduate degree, so he got a construction job with a gas company in Tacoma. It was there that he was befriended by an older worker who talked of regrets over missed opportunities.

“He always told me how he wished he tried this or tried that,” Sundquist recalls.

In 1997, he told his then-girlfriend and future wife, Heidi McMahon, that he wanted to quit his job, move to Southern California and start a career as a stuntman. “She backed me and said, ‘Well if that’s what you want to do,’” he recalls.

A year later, part of which he spent living in his car, the only pavement Sundquist had pounded was with his feet. The stuntman industry was hard to break in to. “There are thousands and thousands of people trying to get in the business, like actors. I was getting ready to throw in the towel.”

But within days of giving up, he got his first big break. His gridiron experience landed him a job as a football player in a video game for EA Sports. After that he was able to get his Screen Actors Guild membership, and doors started to open. Heidi joined him in Southern California. The couple now have been married nine years and have a son, Ryder.

THE ART OF THE STUNT

In movies, stunts are usually story-telling devices that are portrayed as the essence of spontaneity and surprise. In reality, they are anything but.

Careful preparation and caution are what keep stuntmen healthy and ready to report to work the next day. “It’s all planned out. That’s the whole stuntman philosophy,” Sundquist said. “The yahoos don’t last long.”

In movie parlance, there are stunt doubles and non-descript (ND) stuntmen. A double stands in for a particular actor, as Sundquist does for O’Loughlin on “Five-O.” ND stuntmen are the unnamed characters who are blown up, thrown off buildings and hit by cars.

A stunt coordinator hires the crew. When casting for a stunt double, the coordinator looks for someone who can pass as the actor. Many stuntmen also develop specialties, as Sundquist has done with his reputation for taking hits.

While a stuntman can pull a punch, cars can’t. When a stuntman gets hit by a car, he’s really getting hit, Sundquist said.

He calls that particular task “the worst stunt out there.” The key to avoiding injury is a successful jump onto the hood of the car, which is moving at 15-20 miles an hour, followed by a fall off of it. “You have only a split second to rotate and land on your back.”

While Sundquist has spent a fair amount of time rolling over cars, it’s behind the wheel that he’s been steering his career for the past five years. It’s the natural progression for an aging (read: 30s) stuntman, he said. And while driving a car might seem a lot safer than falling off buildings, it’s not necessarily so.

“When stuff goes wrong in a car, it really goes wrong,” Sundquist said. He’s become proficient at drifting cars around corners. “It looks like you’re out of control, but you are still in control. Otherwise, you take out a camera or a person.”

THE ANONYMITY OF THE STUNTMAN

During a recent episode of “Hawaii Five-O,” actor O’Loughlin chases a villain (played by singer, actor and until recently Tacoma Rainiers co-owner Nick Lachey) onto a tourist trolley. O’Loughlin appears to jump on a car and then launch himself into the moving trolley.

In actuality, the cameras stopped rolling when O’Loughlin put his foot on the car. It was then that Sundquist, dressed to match O’Loughlin, took over the scene and made the 10-foot jump from car to trolley where he landed on his stomach. Through camera angles and careful editing, the transition is seamless as O’Loughlin rises up to subdue the treacherous Lachey.

And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work, Sundquist said.

“My job is to make Alex look good. It’s not about the stunt guy. It’s about making the character be who they want him to be. The public likes to think that actor did all those stunts.”

In addition to a matching wardrobe, badge and gun, Sundquist often is outfitted with fake tattoos to match O’Loughlin’s.

Aside from the fact that stuntmen are better skilled in their line of work than most actors, there are economic reasons why stuntmen are needed: Actors are precious commodities, and production will shut down if they get injured, Sundquist said.

“I can’t believe how many actors pull their hamstrings just running 20 yards,” Sundquist said.

REAL DANGERS

Despite Sundquist’s fearless reputation, he has turned down stunts. One in particular was a fall of 80 feet. “I had never practiced it. That’s not for me.”

In reality, some of the most mundane-looking stunts are the most dangerous, and some of the most dangerous are actually quite safe, Sundquist said.

High falls are fairly rare, Sundquist said. Typically, stuntmen use a cable to descend at about 75 percent of normal speed. “It’s probably one of the safer things.”

Injuries do happen from time to time, and that’s why stuntmen like to do their work in one take. “The worst thing is to hear the director say, ‘That was great. Can we do that again?’”

Sundquist has been injured four times; the worst injury came on the set of the HBO vampire series “True Blood.”

Performing a “ratchet” stunt in which a cable pulls the stuntman backward at a rapid speed, Sundquist missed a pad and hit his head on concrete. He blacked out for a few moments but then got up and told the crew he was ready to do it again. He remembers someone saying to him, “You should have heard your head hit the ground.” Producers ordered him to the hospital for an exam. The resulting subarachnoid hemorrhage, bleeding on the brain, kept him out of work for five months.

“That sent my wife into a whole new world,” he said.

Though he calls the accident a fluke, he’s been turning his career in a less dangerous direction since then, partly at Heidi’s urging. He recently was a second unit director on a straight-to-DVD horror movie, “Pig Hunt.”

That’s not to say Sundquist is ready to give up his stuntman ways just yet. Part of that is always staying in the best shape possible. He recently had to reduce his normal 11 percent body fat to 4 percent to match actor Arjun Rampal, for whom he was doubling in the Bollywood sci-fi epic “Ra.One.” He also had to shave his head and get a daily spray tan to match the Indian actor’s skin tone during the five-month shoot.

Wherever Sundquist’s career takes him, friends such as Baldwin say he’ll be the best at whatever he does.

“It doesn’t shock me that he’s made it,” Baldwin said. “He works hard. He’s driven.”

Craig Sailor: 253-597-8541
craig.sailor@thenewstribune.com

A LONG LIST OF HITS

Justin Sundquist’s 14 years as a Hollywood stuntman have given him more than 100 credits in movies and TV shows, from “The X-Files” to “Heroes.” The following are a few of his career highlights:

“Pearl Harbor” (2001): The World War II epic was “intense,” Sundquist said, with many explosions. To prevent becoming a real victim of those blasts, “you have to be on time and perfect. You can’t rehearse.”

“Ocean’s 11” (2001): Served as Matt Damon’s stunt double.

“Training Day” (2001): Served as Ethan Hawk’s stunt double.

“The Longest Yard” (2005): Served as Burt Reynolds’ stunt double.

“Mr. Woodcock” (2007): Served as stunt double for Seann William Scott.

“Vantage Point” (2008): Played a secret service agent with a speaking role.

“24” (2010): Sundquist won three Screen Actors Guild awards for his stunt work in the TV series.

“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” (to be released July 2011): Working with director Michael Bay was challenging, Sundquist said. “He likes to push stunts to the limit.”