Katelynn Olson was performing stunts long before she knew what to call them.  If Olson heard “don’t touch that, don’t jump off that,” she’d want to test the danger even more. She’d insist on reenacting fight choreography from “Star Wars” or “The Lord of the Rings” with her y ounger siblings and even got a reputation in grade school for being faster on all fours than on two legs.  Her younger sister, Grace, remembered Olson’s antics with a resigned sigh.  “Personality-wise, I would say we’re kind of opposite,” she said, describing herself as a “girly girl” who works as a hair stylist, whereas Olson is a little “tougher.” Those lightsaber fights never interested Olson’s younger sister, and Grace joked she’d rather “go paint my toes.” So what does Grace think about her sister working as a stunt actor now? Funny enough, it was the all fours thing that was the biggest clue.  “I’m not surprised. She used to chase me … growing up. She’d chase me down the hallway, I’m like screaming for my life,” Grace recalled as Olson laughed. “I’m trying to make it up the stairs, and she’s running me over.” Of the traits that now serve her in stunt acting, Olson can credit nature for plenty. But nurture — growing up on a cattle ranch in Kamas — had plenty of influence on who Olson is today and how she was even able to accomplish her dream in the first place.  ‘Life’s hard. You get tough’  For breakfast, Olson almost always eats steak and eggs. That’s one remnant of her ranch-life roots, she joked. That and her hard-working attitude.  “The big thing, too, growing up in a small town, is learning how to work hard. I really feel like that was a big thing growing up in that environment, doing a lot of manual labor,” she said. She said her mom was one of the biggest models of that mentality. She’d get five kids up at 4 a.m. to change the hand pipes in the alfalfa fields and work right alongside them, Olson recalled. Chopping firewood, prepping meals, it didn’t matter. Olson’s mom would get it done.  “To her, it’s not a question of, ‘Oh, I don’t want to,’ or, ‘Oh, is there an easy way out?’ She’s just like, ‘This has to be done. Go and do it,’” Olson said. “‘Life’s hard. You get tough.’” Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record Credit: Photo courtesy of Katelynn Olson Katelynn Olson works as a stunt performer and says she’s grateful for her small-town upbringing, like riding horses for as long as she can remember. So, when Olson decided she wanted to pursue the film industry, with no connections, no experience, she got tough.  But it wasn’t easy growing up in rural Utah and carrying the Hollywood dream, she admitted. Her family goes back almost four generations of ranching, and their original family ranch, started by her great-grandfather who came over from Sweden, is located in Manila by the Utah-Wyoming border. She lived there until 9 — a town she joked made Kamas seem huge — when her dad’s work moved them closer to Salt Lake City.  “I just come from that lifestyle (where Hollywood) is a silly kid’s dream, like, ‘You got to get serious because ranching is very serious,’” she said.  Olson described herself as a black sheep for wanting to pursue something deemed out of reach. But most of the voices in her community had the same message: “Be realistic.” Sports, on the other hand, were an acceptable pursuit. So Olson threw her natural athleticism into soccer and basketball and kept her “fragile dream” close to her chest.  “I was already pretty bullied horrendously for being a tomboy growing up, so I always felt like, if I do theater, that’s social suicide,” she said. “It was like this dichotomy of, I love sports. I’m an athlete, but then I have such a passion for film.” Going to the movies, even alone, was one of her favorite pastimes. One night in junior year, the decision to catch a late-night showing at the then-Redstone 8 Theater in Kimball Junction was what she called a “life-changing experience.” “I go to the movie theater, and it was ‘La La Land,’” she said. “I’ve had very few movies where it actually impacts you on a deeper level. I can’t tell you who was in the theater. I don’t even know if anybody was there. I was totally just like, it was me in that film.” But she didn’t run away to Hollywood right then and instead followed the usual formula: graduated from high school and attended Utah Valley University, intending to make the soccer team as a walk-on goalkeeper. But then she tore her labrum in her shoulder at that first practice. “It was almost freeing in a way because I think it let that athlete in me be like, let that chapter end because (we know) what we really want to do with our athleticism,” she said. Finding stunts, a ‘legitimate career’ Olson’s first job in film wasn’t in a fight scene, getting hit by a car or being set on fire. She started with a set gig for the return of the children’s show “Yo Gabba Gabba!,” which was filmed in Park City.  While it was a networking opportunity, it didn’t pay well, so she kept her job at Under Armour to save up and send some money to her family. She would work on the set from around 2 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. the following morning, before heading to her retail job from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. and then going back to the studio parking lot for a nap before repeating the cycle. “Do not work another job while you’re working a film gig. I don’t know what I was thinking,” she joked. Katelynn Olson maps out a run through a series of fake mortars, set up by her boyfriend, who does special effects. The pair started doing Stunt Saturdays as an opportunity to practice skills and build a film portfolio of stunts. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record She worked that schedule for five months, a true testament to the mentality her mom modeled. “One of the biggest things that’s helped me with chasing my goals and my dreams is working hard and putting your head down and doing your best,” she said. While Olson was excited to have earned a small connection to the Utah film scene, working on sets wasn’t the dream. But she began learning what to ask. “I didn’t really know very much about production or exactly how that works out. I would just see Tom Cruise on ‘Mission Impossible,’ and Jackie Chan in a lot of the old Jackie Chan films, where they’re acting, they’re also a stunt actor,” she said. “I just still want to be a kid, playing your little imagination games, and that’s what I feel like movies are in general, is storytelling and having an imagination and (bringing) it to life.” Stunt acting is what she wanted to do, and she learned about the Stunt Performers Academy run by veteran stunt performer Banzai Vitale in Los Angeles. Only six to 10 performers would be accepted after being reviewed by Vitale himself, Olson explained. So she decided to apply and was accepted. To make the move to Los Angeles, she sold her beloved Audi, bought a Honda Civic for $300 and fixed it up — she also loves working on cars — then used the leftover money to follow her dream for the month-and-a-half-long program.  Her cohort trained at a gym in Van Nuys, California, called JAM, Joining All Movement, which is primarily used by stunt performers. There, she began learning more about the industry. “This is like a legitimate career. This is not as far-fetched as I thought as a kid,” she learned. “It existed, and it was getting closer.” Katelynn Olson performs a stunt, throwing herself at a shipping container as if being blown back by a mortar explosion. Stunt performers are tasked with safely bringing action to life, she explained. The job can range from big-scale action like fire burns and car crashes, but more often it’s little things: A cop in the background of a scene who is shot and falls, that’s a stunt actor, Olson said. To keep themselves safe, stunt performers learn to fall safely, such as by twisting their bodies in mid-air so they don’t land on their heads. Often, they wear pads under their clothes, but that doesn’t always help. Olson has weathered plenty of bruises. Doubling is another more well-known role in stunt performing. That’s when a person is brought on as a look-alike for an actor to perform the more risky elements of a scene. Those roles are less common for stunt actors because it’s difficult to find someone with the right parameters for the role. They’re mostly driven by money because stunt actors are expendable, and the actors aren’t.  For example, Cruise can do his own stunts because he’s financially liable for any delays in production costs, Olson explained.  Olson, at 5 feet 8 inches, said she can usually double someone who’s between 5 feet 6 inches and 5 feet 10 inches. A lot comes down to being at the right place at the right time. It’s how she landed a job in the “Yellowstone” spin-off series “Marshals,” filmed in Park City. Living the dream In the first season of “Marshals,” Olson doubled for actress Ellyn Jameson, who plays Dolly Weaver in the show. Most of those doubling scenes are for Western-style horse riding, a skill that is less common in the Los Angeles talent pool, Olson said. Jameson is actually 6 feet 1 inch, but Olson has a long torso, so it still worked from a distance on the back of a horse. Olson said she actually meant to work sets for “Marshals,” but then lost the job due to budget cuts. Instead, she got a last-minute role on the “crafty” team, which handles food service. Yet it was her JAM ball cap, a subtle cue to her training as a stunt performer, that made her stand out when a stunt gig opened up. She fit the parameters, secured an audition and was cast. But again, Olson said it wasn’t easy. Stunt performer Katelynn Olson throws herself into a shipping crate as a fake mortar deploys, blowing fake debris. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record “When I was auditioning for ‘Marshals,’ the fear of not being good enough, or the fear of looking like an idiot, or the fear of underperforming was very real. Like, it was overwhelmingly real,” Olson remembered. “I think learning to be comfortable with that and sit with that and be like, ‘Oh, fear is just because you’re passionate about it,’ is the way I look at it.” She also has a small role in episode eight, credited as “local girl,” which hearkens to her upbringing in the Wasatch Back, where the show was filmed. While “Marshals” was a great experience, filming from August to November 2025, Olson said that with stunt work, she never knows if she’ll be unemployed for six months. It’s a good thing she’s frugal, another inheritance from her ranching upbringing. She’s decided to make Utah her home base, eager to support filmmaking in her home state, especially as more and more productions take advantage of incentives to film outside of the more expensive Los Angeles. In between gigs, Olson keeps up training and films “short actions,” mini action films, with stunt buddies and her boyfriend, who works in special effects.  Since she’s still starting, and because she’s just that ballsy, she’ll do whatever stunt — which can be kind of dangerous. “The stunts that nobody wants to do, the ones that people are like, ‘I don’t know how I feel about that,’ I would be like, I am so down,” she said. “Would it be nerve-wracking? Yes, but that’s the fun part. … I’m a gonk in the sense of, like, ‘We need to light somebody on fire. We need to hit somebody with a car’ … I’ll do it.” Olson said fight choreography is still near and dear to her heart, and she’d love to see and be a part of more all-woman fight scenes. “It’s like a dance,” she said. “You get to be creative and expressive, but it also, like, there’s storytelling tied into it.” Credit: Photo courtesy of Katelynn Olson Credit: Photo courtesy of Katelynn Olson Katelynn Olson says she was always an active child, climbing trees, riding horses and even broke her arm. Ultimately, Olson will follow her love of stunts anywhere in the world. “I’m basically like a toddler that never grew up,” she joked. “My whole career is basically being a toddler of being like, ‘I’m going to jump off of this. I’m going to light myself on fire. I’m going to touch that.’” ‘Greatness from small beginnings’ Kamas will always be part of her life, Olson said, even though her family doesn’t have the ranch anymore. Her mom and sister still live there. It’s changing a lot, though. “I like open space. I like rural areas. It’s hard when you grew up on the land to see the land being used for development,” she said. “I guess it’s cool that people want to live there?” With the attention she’s gotten from her role in “Marshals,” Olson said it’s been encouraging to hear from people she grew up with supporting her journey. “Past teachers, people in the community that knew me … a lot of them were like, ‘Oh, I remember Katelynn mentioning or saying something like that,’” she said. “Or like, ‘Oh, I knew she’d figure it out.’” As a lover of underdog stories, Olson said she wants other kids growing up in small towns like Kamas to feel inspired to chase their own dreams. “I think it’s easy to put yourself in a box or to be put in a box by other people around you,” she said. “I think a lot of people give up right before they’re going to get it because it’s hard. And I think that’s what separates people from actually achieving it and having that success versus not is just trying to fight through that really, really gruesome low point where nothing’s changing, nothing’s happening. … I don’t know if this is bad, but I love that point. I love being in the thick of it.” Eventually, there’s a give, she said, what she describes as the “law of the universe,” and it all just adds to that underdog story.  Having accomplished her dream of becoming a stunt performer, Katelynn Olson hopes other kids in small towns are inspired to chase their own dreams. Credit: Photo courtesy of Katelynn Olson “Sometimes you’re like, ‘Hey, a little less of that. I’m feeling plenty challenged. I don’t need that much. We could bring it down a notch,’” she joked. To the kids in Kamas, she said to remember, “You are what you make yourself.” Her favorite Latin saying is “sic parvis magna,” which means “greatness from small beginnings.” “I didn’t want to just accomplish it for me. I wanted to prove to people that there are people out there that, when they say, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this,’ they’re going to do it,” she said. “Like, ‘She stuck to it and actually was a woman of her word and gave it her all and figured it out.’” The post ‘Local girl’ follows a dream to Hollywood and back appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less