Ted White's Bio - Friday the 13th Part 4 Jason Voorhees

Ted White's Bio Friday the 13th Part 4 Jason Voorhees

Ted White is an American stunt man/actor who doubled for John Wayne, Fess Parker, Clark Gable, Lee Marvin and Richard Boone, among others. He has also acted in several movie westerns and in such TV series as "Hunter", "Magnum, P.I." and "The Rockford Files," usually in tough-guy roles such as police officers or hired thugs. The hulking (6'4") White also played football for the University of Oklahoma.

In 1984 he was selected to play hockey masked killer Jason Voorhees for Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, simply because 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 hurt their performances.

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. White became so mad 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 distaste for the role, he is considered by many fans to have been one of the best Jasons.




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