UCLA Gymnastics is well known for having their athletes go on to careers in the Circus after graduation. Less well known is how many girls go on to stunt work.
UCLA magazine posted an excellent article on Bruin gymnasts getting work as doubles on TV and in the Movies.
Five former UCLA female gymnasts work on Make it or Break It.
… Natalie Padilla ’08, Jordan Schwikert ’09 and Ariana Berlin ’10 perform as stunt doubles for some of the lead characters; Tasha Schwikert ’09 plays a gym-nast on the show; and Karin Silvestri-Coye ’98 serves as the show’s gymnastics coordinator. …
2008 NCAA Champion Tasha Schwikert
… Other former Bruin gymnastics stars who have found stunt work in Hollywood include Dee Fischer Murphy ’96 and Kiralee Hayashi ’00 …
… Heidi Moneymaker, has been doing stunts full-time since 2001 …
Read the article – Stunts and Circuses
Related – cool new ad for G2 (Gatorade) features Chellsie Memmel on Bars
Update – check the comments for more information on stunt work gymnasts
3 comments ↓
It was a low cal version. It should be “fruit and chicken flavor” for Chelsie!
I remember around this time, they used to come into SMGC as one of their venues for training, along with Chad Stahelski. If one wanted to get into stuntwork, Chad was a good guy to be friends with. He is a very talented martial artist out of the Inosanto Academy who doubled for his late friend, Brandon Lee, and whose career really began to take off when he became a stunt-double/trainer for Keanu Reeves in the Matrix.
Former male Bruin gymnasts have also gone into the entertainment industry: Mitch and Chuck Gaylord, Chris and Mark Caso…Dan McCann, who often got calls onto Leno; and Terry Notary is a producer who became big after training actors in ape school on Planet of the Apes. He also did Cirque du Soleil, before that.
Thanks wordsmith. And Happy New Year.
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