The renowned stuntman, actor, and director Gary Kent, who worked with directors like Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Rush, and Monte Hellman as well as in B-movies, has died at the age of 89. In Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Brad Pitt’s character was modeled around Kent’s portrayal of a real-life stuntman.
Gary passed suddenly on Thursday night at an assisted living home in Austin, Texas, according to Kent’s son Chris Kent, who was quoted in The Hollywood Reporter. Working on Richard Rush movies cost Kent many injuries during his career as a stunt performer.
He sustained a serious arm injury from flying glass during a bar brawl in Hells Angels on Wheels (1967), and in The Savage Seven (1968), where he appeared alongside Penny Marshall, he was hit by a motorcycle by accident.
Kent’s five-decade-long career as a stuntman came to an end in 2002 when he broke his leg after falling down a hill while filming Bubba Ho-Tep. He did, however, continue to work as a stunt coordinator, with Sex Terrorists on Wheels in 2019 being his most recent project.
In addition to performing stunts, Kent also had important roles in movies directed by Richard Rush and Peter Bogdanovich. He performed fire stunts and played a thug in Rush’s Psych-Out (1968), handled special effects for Bogdanovich’s career-launching film Targets (1968), played a hitman in Hell’s Bloody Devils (1970), a motorcyclist in The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971), and a rapist in Angels’ Wild Women (1971).
Tarantino reportedly spoke with Kent as he worked on the writing for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, according to Joe O’Connell, the filmmaker of the documentary Danger God. Brad Pitt won an Academy Award for his riveting work in the movie as the charming stunt double for Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Rick Dalton, Cliff Booth.