Ted White (stuntman)

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Ted White is a 6'4" tall, massive American stunt man/actor who doubled for John Wayne, Fess Parker, Clark Gable, Lee Marvin and Richard Boone, among others. 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 he reluctantly accepted only because he needed the money. White did not see the entertainment value in watching attractive, over-sexed teenagers being destroyed by a hulking lunatic, and 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 caught 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 disdain for the genre, White grudgingly stated that the film turned out better than he thought it would, but he refused to play the part again in the fifth installment, saying that having played Jason once was enough for him. Nevertheless, many fans consider him to be one of the best Jasons.