She works in one of the toughest and most challenging areas of motorcycling. So, it was a surprise to learn that—when motorcycle stuntwoman and champion trials rider Debbie Evans found out she was going to be inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame—this woman with nerves of steel was overcome with tears of joy. “Motorcycles have been such a big part of my life. For me to be up on that wall with the names of people I respect and have heard of all my life is such a great honor,” explains Evans, tears welling up in her eyes even now as she recalls the day in 2003 she received the life-changing letter in the mail.
The honor is the culmination of more than 20 years of hard work putting her unique mark on the motorcycling world. Evans is arguably the leading motorcycle stuntwoman in Hollywood today. She was the first to show the industry that women could perform the more challenging stunts just as well as the men, including stunts involving motorcycles.
Evan’s story began when she discovered she could do a headstand on the seat of a motorcycle while balancing it on two wheels. She performed the gravity-defying stunt as an 18-year-old Yamaha factory trials rider during a break in the racing action at the Houston Astrodome in the early 1970s. Evans wowed a crowd of 42,000 when she grabbed hold of the handlebars of her TY175 and muscled herself upright into a headstand position, one hand on the tank, the other on the bars. Then as the minutes ticked by, Evans held that position balancing herself and the bike long enough to rouse the audience to a standing ovation.
The stunt also caught the eye of Hollywood movie producer, who asked if Evans would use her talented two-wheeled skills to perform a stunt in the 1978 movie “Death Sport.” Evans had no doubt she’d be able to execute what the producer asked of her—jump a 30-foot ravine on a Yamaha DT400 enduro bike. “I watched and saw how they made everything as safe as possible. It seemed more like athletics, like a sport type of thing rather than a daredevil-type thing. That’s when I got interested in doing all kinds of different stunts,” says Evans.
At the same time, the teenaged Evans was also making her mark as an up-and-coming trials rider. Encouraged by her dad, famed enduro rider Dave Evans, who taught her to ride at age six, Evans competed in the national trials series against men in the mid ‘70s, as there was no women’s division back then. In 1978, she competed in a round of the FIM World Championships and was the only woman at the time to do so.
Trials took a back seat in Evan’s life when more stunt work was offered to her. She remembers on the set of “Death Sport,” after having performed the ravine jump flawlessly, she was asked if she wouldn’t mind performing a few other stunts. “They handed me a sword and said, ‘We want you to do a fight scene, we think you can do it,’” recalls Evans. “‘You mean I get to play with a sword’ I asked. They said, ‘Yes, we want you to run around and swing it.’ You mean you’re going to pay me to play?’” Evans could not believe she stumbled onto a job that had her riding motorcycles and performing exciting stunts, and then walking away with a paycheck. “When I reached a certain age it was no longer cool to do those kind of things, and now here I was with offers to get paid to do this stuff,” she smiles.
For the next 20 years, this Southern California native performed every kind of stunt imaginable, with motorcycles being her specialty. “I did stair falls, getting hit by cars, high falls, scuba diving stunts, water stunts, snow skiing stunts.” She’s doubled lots of actors including Pamela Lee riding a motorcycle in Barb Wire, Elizabeth Hurley, Sandra Bullock and Kate Capshaw. She was the regular stunt person for Stephanie Zimbalist in the TV series Remington Steele, and did all the motorcycle stunts for Linda Carter in Wonder Woman. She also doubled Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 and in the TV series Beauty and the Beast. Evan’s most recent work on the big screen was on the set of The Matrix Reloaded doubling Carrie-Ann Moss in the movie’s daring motorcycle chase scenes, which left her uttering the words she’s never said before, “It’s the closest I’ve ever come…. “
Evans has had an amazing record of success with her stunts. The few times she has crashed or missed a mark she’s walked away. “That’s the one thing I’ve always been kind of a natural at,” she explains. “Ever since I was a little kid, riding bicycles, skateboards—when I would crash I would naturally roll out of it really nice.”
She remembers on the set of Burglar she was riding a Honda Ascot dressed as a police bike doubling Whoopi Goldberg (and getting special permission to double a black actor as the rules dictate black people double black actors). The scene had her traveling down a steep road in San Francisco at a high rate of speed and then doing a jump that should have been about 30 feet. When Evans hit the ramp the Ascot’s suspension was not set up to accommodate the extra weight from the police garb, and the bike spring-boarded haphazardly, sending Evans 94 feet in the air before landing. “Everything slows down,” remembers Evans of the moment she knew she was in trouble. “I went ‘uh oh.’ I remember going over the bars and thinking they’re hauling me away this time. I ended up fine though, and walked away.”
On the set of Reloaded Evans had no problem handling the motorcycle chase scenes on a Ducati 996, where she was asked to dart in and out of oncoming traffic performing head-on near misses while a passenger held on to her waist. It was the scene where she had to shoot down between two oncoming semi-trucks that had her fearing for her life. Someone’s timing was off, which meant if Evans didn’t think fast she would have gotten smashed between a retaining wall and a semi. “It just about gave me a heart attack,” she says with a nervous grin.
Evans says she has a healthy respect for each situation in which she finds herself. Before each stunt she prays and asks God to protect her. “I put it in his hands. I guess he’s protected me. I really believe that. There have been times where I should have been taken to a hospital and I walked away instead.”
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Evans is smart about the choices she makes with each stunt. “I look at everything and weigh it out. I plan it and I do it.” This mother of three children ranging from seven to 22 believes she is gifted with the talent to perform stunts. “There was a time when I had my last two kids and I thought maybe I shouldn’t do this anymore, so I backed off. I found I wasn’t very happy so I went back to work and it made me a lot more of a peaceful person because I was using the gift I was given. I kind of have a natural ability for this stuff.”
While Evans excelled in the stunt world she never lost her appetite for trials. In 1998, the opportunity came up for her to compete in the FIM World Championships, now in the women’s division. Her first year back competing she finished eighth overall and was the best American in a field that included 42 entries from 12 countries.
To this day, people still have a hard time believing this feminine, petite, 5-foot 4-inch 120-pound woman does what she does for a living. For Evans, it was a natural evolution from what she was interested in as a child. “I was a tomboy. I was always playing ball, cops and robbers, climbing trees. That’s what I loved to do. I could do a wheelie better than the boys. I rode a unicycle and body surfed, too.”
While she enjoys playing in man’s world, make no mistake—Evans is very much a woman. She recalls how jazzed she was when her husband of 25 years, Lane Leavitt, who also performs stunts in Hollywood, surprised her with a sapphire and diamond necklace at the end of a race. “It was real pretty. I love all that stuff.”
Evans says she has no plans to slow down her stunt work anytime soon. As long her as her body allows her, the woman who showed the industry that a female is capable of performing the more challenging stunts just as well as a man, will keep on riding motorcycles over cliffs and through fire. “I’m glad that I could break ground for other women to do this. I don’t think it was right that only men could do the harder and bigger stunts before.”
You can catch Debbie Evans in The Cinderella Story starring Hilary Duff, in which Evans drives a Jaguar doubling the wicked stepmother. The feature film is scheduled for release in July 2004. And to read more about Evans, log onto www.stuntrev.com.
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