Monica Staggs

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Monica Staggs
Staggs at the Comic Con in San Diego, 2006
Born	Boulder, Colorado, USA
Official site	MonicaStaggs.com

Monica Staggs (born in Boulder, Colorado) is an American stuntwoman and actress.

She is the oldest daughter of Thomas Staggs, an architect and Nova Staggs, a teacher, where she enjoyed frequent trips to Casa Bonita and developed a lifelong, diehard love for the Denver Broncos.

1 Growing Up
2 College
3 Career
4 External Links

[edit] Growing Up

When she was five her family, which included her younger sister, Amy, moved to North Little Rock, Arkansas where she grew up a tomboy practicing how to rouchambeau redneck boys on the playground and playing Charlie's Angels in the woods behind her house. She began dance lessons at the age of eight in ballet, tap and jazz and danced until she graduated from high school.

[edit] College

Monica attended college at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville where she majored in Drama and Creative Writing, acted in many theatrical productions, and kept up her study of dance. In the summers she waited tables, canned fish in a salmon cannery in Alaska, painted houses, and won poetry slams. In her senior year at college, Monica got to work on a film that had come to Little Rock called Shelter where she was the stand in for the lead actress as well as landing a small part. Monica got her big break when she was luckily offered the chance to be the lead actresses’ stunt double. She rode passenger as a car ran off an embankment, crashing through trees before and stopping just before a lake. Getting a taste for the thrill of the film business, three weeks later, Monica flew to L.A. for the first time and worked on her second film. She fell in love with Los Angeles and everything about it. As soon as she returned to Arkansas she announced she was moving to L.A. and two weeks later she did on the plane, not knowing a soul, with three large duffle bags, a fork, a knife and a bath towel, and has never looked back.

[edit] Career

After moving to L.A. Monica’s dance training, her height and slender build gave her an advantage when competing for stunt jobs and within three weeks she was lucky enough to land her third film. She began training in other areas of stunt work such as stunt driving, martial arts, stunt fights, and boxing. She has done stand-up comedy, performing at The Improv, The Comedy Store, the Laugh Factory and various other places and is currently working on her new act. She has worked on more than one hundred film and television productions and has also worked as a stunt coordinator. She is also a board member of the Stuntwomen’s Association.

Monica still lives in L.A. where she loves to play Texas hold 'em, enters tournaments regularly and hosts home games where she attempts to take money from her fellow stunt peers. Her other pastimes include watching South Park, Reno 911! and any and all horror movies.

She is currently shooting a sketch comedy pilot that she wrote and in which she will star. One of her characters, Cletus Rufus, can be found at her website.[1]

Monica has graciously been offered a part in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Grind House project and was honored at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards when she was brought to the stage by Tarantino to share the award for Best Fight in Kill Bill 2.