The Woman Actually Throwing Those Punches on Dynasty Wasn’t Linda Evans

TLDR: Every time Krystle Carrington and Alexis Colby tore into each other on Dynasty, there’s a real chance you weren’t watching Linda Evans at all. In a blonde wig, taking every hit, was Jeannie Epper, a woman Entertainment Weekly once called the greatest stuntwoman who ever lived.

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Jean Luann Epper was born January 27, 1941, in Glendale, California, to John and Frances Epper, both professional stunt performers. Her father had immigrated from Switzerland in the 1920s and built a riding academy in Los Angeles before moving into stunt work himself.

Jeannie became one of Hollywood’s first professional child stunt doubles at age nine, the start of a career that would run for seven decades.

Stunt Work Wasn’t a Job in Her Family, It Was the Family Business

Five of Epper’s siblings, Tony, Margo, Gary, Andy, and Stephanie, all worked in stunts too, a family act Steven Spielberg once described as “the Flying Wallendas of Film.” Three of Epper’s own children, Eurlyne, Richard, and Kurtis, followed her into the profession as well, along with a grandson, Christopher.

She Broke Through When the Industry Barely Made Room for Women

Epper has said stunt work was genuinely hard to come by for women early in her career, until the wave of action-driven female leads in the late 1970s finally opened doors.

Her breakthrough, and the role she’d always remain most associated with, came doubling Lynda Carter on Wonder Woman from 1976 to 1979, crashing through windows, kicking down doors, and deflecting bullets across all three seasons.

She doubled Lindsay Wagner on The Bionic Woman and Kate Jackson on the original Charlie’s Angels around the same period, becoming one of the defining action stunt performers of the decade.

She Took the Hits So Linda Evans Didn’t Have To

In a blonde wig, Epper doubled Linda Evans for the physical fight sequences in Dynasty’s famous catfights against Joan Collins’s Alexis, some of the most elaborately staged brawls in television history.

She also stunt-drove for Shirley MacLaine in the scene where MacLaine’s character throws Jack Nicholson from her Corvette in Terms of Endearment.

Her most celebrated single stunt came in 1984’s Romancing the Stone, doubling Kathleen Turner as she was swept away in a mudslide, a sequence that earned Epper a 1985 Stuntman Award for most spectacular stunt in a feature film.

She Never Really Stopped, Even Into Her 70s

Epper’s career stretched across more than 150 film and television credits, including Catch Me If You Can and Minority Report, both directed by Steven Spielberg, who called her “one of the greatest stunt coordinators.” At age 74, she was still performing stunts in the 2015 comedy Hot Pursuit, alongside Sofia Vergara and Reese Witherspoon.

She became president of the Stuntwomen’s Association of Motion Pictures in 1999, and in 2007 became the first woman selected for a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Taurus World Stunt Awards.

Filmmaker Amanda Micheli profiled her alongside fellow stuntwoman Zoë Bell in the 2004 documentary Double Dare, spending years documenting her career and influence on the industry.

“It’s all I really know, outside of being a mom or a grandma,” Epper said of the work in that same documentary.

She Died Surrounded by the Family She’d Built the Business With

Epper died of natural causes on May 5, 2024, at her home in Simi Valley, California, at age 83, with family present. Her son Kurtis, also a stunt performer, had preceded her in death. She was survived by her children Eurlyne and Richard, both of whom carried on in the family trade.

You can read more about the rest of the Dynasty cast, and the two actresses whose fights Epper spent years staging, in our full guide to the show.

Jeannie Epper, Frequently Asked Questions