This week’s open threads will highlight the dangerous work of African-American stuntmen and their female counterparts.
Born on January 13, 1978 in Atlanta, Georgia, Jwaundace Candance is one of Hollywood’s most popular African American stuntwoman/action actresses. She has performed stunts for a number of actors such as Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson (DreamGirls), Golden Globe winner Queen Latifah, Patricia Belcher, Mo’Nique and Kym Whitley just to name a few. Jwaundace is not just beautiful but she’s also a daredevil, from being thrown against walls to performing motorcycle stunts, to crashing cars for Volkswagen there’s never a dull moment. No wonder she was nominated for “Best Fight” for MTV’s Movie Awards in 2003.
Few weeks after her move to Los Angeles and a few dollars short on rent in her small studio apartment in Hollywood, Jwaundace decided to audition to be a member of the TV sports hit, Women of Wrestling (WOW). Although she came to Los Angeles to be an actress, she pursued professional wrestling to pay the bills. That’s when she realized she had a talent and a love for athletics and believed that this could be a direct avenue to become an action actress, which is her ultimate goal. Jwaundace started to take wrestling more serious. Despite encouragement to be a good guy in the wrestling arena, she made a choice to be a bad guy a.k.a. Delta Lotta Pain, by being a member of the notorious “Caged Heat”— who dominated the ring with their tactics and gimmicks becoming WOW’s first Tag Team Champions in 2001 with her sidekicks, Loca and Vendetta.
It was then that her dreams began to unfold by being approached by a fellow wrestling peer and stuntwoman, Elle Alexander, who convinced her to give her wrestling reel to stunt coordinator John Medlen. Medlen presented Jwaundace’s reel to the studio to perform stunts for veteran entertainer, Queen Latifah, on her hit movie “Bringing Down the House.” Once they saw Jwaundace in action, she was immediately signed on to perform stunts doubling the Queen herself.
Because of the great job she did in the movie, which resulted in a nomination for Best Fight in the 2003 MTV Movie Awards. Queen Latifah was excited to have Jwaundace on board for all of her upcoming movies performing stunts for her in any way fit, which lead to “Scary Movie 3”, “Taxi” and “Last Holiday”.
Jwaundace is a member of the prestigious Stuntwomen’s Association of Motion Pictures (SWAMP). She takes her craft serious and is trained in all areas such as fighting, riding motorcycles (she’s a member of the Infinite Ryders), crashing cars and loves hitting the ground hard.
She has appeared in a number of commercials for Volkswagen, Wendy’s, Dodge and Lantus, and recently showed off her passion as an action actress in a few episodes of the new Fox show, “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”, “Nip/Tuck” and made a special appearance in a Fall 2008 episode of “CSI”.
With her non-stop training and workout regimen, Jwaundace is always ready for action. Although she has worked with some great directors, she hopes to one day also work with Brett Ratner, J.J. Abrams, Spike Lee, Ridley Scott, John Singleton and Quentin Tarantino.
***Information courtesy of Stuntgirl.com and http://nuphenomenenon.wordpress.com***