With over 200 feature and TV credits spanning a three-decade career, stuntman Rick LeFevour has taken hits from, and on behalf of, stars such as Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, and Nicolas Cage.
The owner of Midwest Stunts, LeFevour coordinates a group of 30 male and female stunt professionals. There’s rarely a feature or TV show that’s shot in the area that doesn’t involve his crew.
In “Public Enemies,” LeFevour was a bank guard who got socked in the jaw by John Dillinger. Other Midwest Stunts’ members had brief roles as prison guards, security men and gangsters.
Since “Enemies” wasn’t a huge action movie, he says, “We worked more in staging fights and shootouts, and with the cars.”
LeFevour often does double duty by acting in a small role and also coordinating stuntwork. “My line is usually something like ?They went that way!’ and then I get killed,” he jokes.
LeFevour and Co. spent most of the summer in the Detroit area working on the recently wrapped crime thriller, “Stone,” starring Robert De Niro and Edward Norton.
For another movie that filmed around Ann Arbor earlier this year, LeFevour organized fight work in a prison and burning down of a farmhouse, for the Hilary Swank-Sam Rockwell drama, “Betty Ann Waters.”
He also has directed second units for Chicago-shot “Fred Claus” and “Prison Break” in the past, and helped with casting on “The Beast” last year.
Midwest Stunts was recently awarded at the recent Taurus World Stunt Awards. LeFevour shared the “Coordinator of the Year” trophy for his work on “The Dark Knight” with collaborators Paul Jennings and Tom Struthers.
Fellow Midwest Stunts’ members Tobiasz Daszkiewicz and Tom Lowell also were awarded, as part of the team responsible for “Knight’s” many breathtaking vehicle stunts.
They received the “Best High Work” accolade for a scene in which Batman throws five men out of a 420-ft. high building.
“A wire stunt like that, with five men attached to a wire, had never been done before,” says LeFevour.
