Indie Actress/Stunt woman Natalie Jean (Interview)

Recently, I had the great opportunity to have a brief chat with indie actress and stunt woman Natalie Jean at The Portage International Film Festival, where her film The Cemetery was being screened. Ms. Jean is a woman of many talents, not only is she an actress and a union stunt person, but she is a professional dancer, contortionist, performance artist, and model.

Currently, Ms. Jean is on the road promoting her starring roles in two independent horror films, The Cemetery and Cross Bearer, both of which she serves as a producer. Read on after the break as we talk about her role in The Cemetery and Cross Bearer as well as how she got into the stunt business.

Michael Juvinall: After having seen The Cemetery, I’d have to say it’s a very solid film and you have a great role in the film. What can you say about working on the production of The Cemetery?

Natalie Jean: Thank you. It was really fun actually, it’s moderately low-budget, it wasn’t cheap but for a movie it was low-budget. We all stayed in one space together, we were out in the woods in a cabin for the bulk of it. It was a 12 day straight shoot for the bulk of the movie and then we did inserts for the year. We were all living together in the same space, sharing all of our meals together and the actors got to spend lots of time having fun, making scenes work together.

It really was pretty communal and overall I have positive memories from it. It’s honestly why we ended up making the second movie, Cross Bearer which was not as pleasant a turn but it fit the movie. It was not as easy as The Cemetery but I guess when you’re making something depressing like that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.

MJ: You’re also a Stunt person as well, what can you say about that line of work?

NJ: Yeah, it’s really more of my bread and butter, it’s what I do.

MJ: How did you get into that?

NJ: You know you fall into it. People always ask me how they can get started or they want to try and do it. It’s really hard to try to do it, there’s a little bit of nepotism but mostly it’s based on the relationships that the stunt coordinators have with their kids. It makes sense because you are putting everyone’s lives in your hands on set. Sometimes it’s really fun stuff like falls, fires, burns, and stuff like that but sometimes you are really responsible for everyone’s lives. You have to make relationships with the stunt coordinators and the stunt community to get work. There’s no way to audition yourself and you can go to school for it which can teach you stuff but you’re not going to get jobs from that. If you’re making indie films, it’s really the same deal. You make your connections, you make your friends, you work really hard and the jobs come from that.

MJ: So was acting just a natural progression for you from stunt work?

NJ: I started actually being on-stage my whole life. I’m a dancer so I was always in the theater and I started modeling at a young age too. Through those two things, my agency started pushing me towards doing TV work and stuff. I found my way into that realm and completely fell in love with movie sets. Movie sets in some way is just a gigantic stage. I love doing it and sort of just fell into different realms. I started working on music videos; I met the first stunt coordinator on one of those TV shows who started training me and through a lot of those jobs met the indie directors who also do other jobs too. We started to click and it all just started to flow and organically happened over the course of the last five years.

MJ: Is the stunt community a close knit family like the indie filmmaking community is?

NJ: In some senses it is. It’s always so surprising how small it is and there are certainly many circles within that family.

MJ: What else do you have that you’re working on right now, what’s coming up for you?

NJ: These two movies (The Cemetery and Cross Bearer) since I ended up coming into on the production level too, Adam Ahlbrandt, the director, editor, cinematographer, he and I have been on this path with these two movies. They have almost completely consumed our lives for a long time now. For the last four months we haven’t had any separation at all, and I’m always working. I’ve done some stunt jobs and within the community of the people in this movie we’ve each done separate projects together. We’ve done shorts, music videos, Doug Sakmann the special effects guy and I shot a movie which is wrapped and in post-production now. Adam (Ahlbrandt) has multiple screenplays out right now for potential films.

We put so much effort into these and they’re going to be on tour. These are going out in the next half year, we’re doing a lot of Grindhouse style screenings and incorporating live acts with that too when it’s touring and that takes a lot of my time up. I love them and I’m looking forward to doing other stuff too but you have to give the attention they deserve before we attempt to do an entire feature again, we want to do it right. The Cross Bearer was a great learning experience for most of us, I would never take a day back of it, but we can’t ever do that again. It’s just not something that you ever want to repeat in a lifetime doing that. In many ways, it was very rewarding but because everyone gave so much to it for nothing, no comforts, we did every single thing we could to help make it a comfortable situation. It was never going to be comfortable doing this movie and it serves its purpose within that genre.