Marneen Fields

Marneen Fields was born on Aug 16, 1955 in USA. Marneen Fields's big-screen debut came with The Spell directed by Lee Philips in 1977.

Marneen Lynne Fields was born in Minot, North Dakota, on August 16, 1955. She's the only daughter of Robert Leo Fields II, a country-western singer and square dance caller who became the inventor of the Inflatable Door Seal, and Ruby Marie Farris-Fields a homemaker who had dreams of becoming a writer. Marneen was a sickly child born with emphysema and an enlarged heart who wasn't expected to live to be five years old. As a young second grader, Marneen was somewhat of a child prodigy in math taking algebra classes with teenagers at the local high school. She was an exceptional young athlete winning first place in all the races one day at her elementary school track meet along with being a shortstop softball all-star making the Culver City Newspaper each week. One year she won the dance contest at the park during the Easter Egg Hunt Program and wanted to be a dancer when she grew up. Marneen was also a multi-musician playing keyboard, string bass, and clarinet in her elementary school band. She started doing handstands and back-bends those years and the neighborhood kids would line the block following her, counting to see how far she could walk on her hands.She was awarded Athlete of the Year in 9th grade (beating out all the boys), for obtaining the highest scores on the President's Physical Fitness Tests at Sinaloa Jr. High School in Simi Valley, California. At sixteen years old Marneen created and opened the first Simi Valley Parks and Recreations program in gymnastics for children and adults of all ages including handicapped children of all types, mentally challenged, deaf and blind. In 1972 she won Most Talented Cheerleader out of all the cheerleaders at the Southern California Cheerleader Camp in Santa Barbara, California. That same year she lost all the hearing in her left ear due to a throat infection that left her severely hearing impaired. The infection destroyed 80% of her hearing nerves in the left ear just missing her equilibrium nerves and making her legally half deaf. Had the infection hit Marneen's equilibrium nerves she would not have gone on to achieve what she achieved in her early career in gymnastics and stunts. Marneen continued to coach gymnastics throughout college and during her early career as a stunt woman.In 1973 Marneen Fields graduated Royal High School in Simi Valley, California with a major honor. She was one of three women in the United States awarded a full-ride athletic scholarship in gymnastics to Utah State University in Logan, Utah where she also minored in theater arts and dance. In the early 70s, It was rare for women to be awarded athletic scholarships in gymnastics, they didn't give them to women back then. At USU Marneen was the number one gymnast for the college competing at the national intercollegiate class one advance all-around level due to her ability to perform moves similar to Olympic Gold Medalist Olga Korbut. She was ranked third in the entire state of Utah, third on floor exercise and fifth on balance beam.During the summer of 1976, she was home from college in Ventura, California recovering from an ankle reconstruction surgery when she was discovered by legendary stuntman Paul Stader (Cary Grant's double). Paul recognized the champion gymnastic talent in Marneen and recruited her to join his famous film and TV stunt school to become a Hollywood stunt woman. By December 1976 Marneen landed her first acting role being cast by Eddie Foy III as one of the mischievous schoolmates in the MOW "The Spell," and she also landed the stunt job performing the backward high fall from the top of the hanging rope in the gymnasium. By 1977 she was a regular stunt performer on the hit TV series, "The Man from Atlantis." On the series, Marneen performed risky high dives, including a dive out of a helicopter into a swimming pool to resuscitate a dying Patrick Duffy. That year she became the first woman photographed doing the famous Man from Atlantis swim at the bottom of the ocean floor. But, it wasn't until the summer of 1977 when she appeared opposite Clint Eastwood in "The Gauntlet," and she performed the highly dangerous backward jump with a half twist off the moving train into only some sand that she launched to the top of stunt world. For fifteen years, Marneen appeared on TV shows and movie screens around the world performing many more dangerous high falls on MOWs like, "Goliath Awaits" and "Death Ray 2000"; high dives on "Man from Atlantis"; feet first jumps out of airplanes on "The Rockford Files," and off tall buildings on "Quincy"; fight scenes on "Wonder Woman" and "The Return of Mike Hammer"; underwater scuba work on "Project UFO"; and fire scenes on "The Runner Stumbles." By 1985 Marneen had been coined Hollywood's Original Fall Girl and awarded a Fall Girl license plate by J.P. Bill Catching and the Stuntman's Association. Marneen tackled more dangerous stunt jobs as she got cast in many stunt acting roles performing her own stunts along with straight acting roles on prime time TV shows and in feature films.Wikipedia lists Marneen Fields as one of the prominent stunt women and stunt actresses of the 1970s and 1980s. During those years, the world saw her versatility as an actress, and great gymnastic talent as a stunt woman, step into the shoes of 100 of the world's most famous actresses to perform death-defying feats for them, and for herself when cast in a role that required a stunt. Some of the film and TV shows she's appeared in and the actresses she did stunts for are: Jane Seymour "Battlestar Galactica," Priscilla Presley "The Fall Guy," Shirley Jones "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure," Michelle Phillips "The Man with Bogart's Face," Morgan Fairchild "Time Express," Belinda Montgomery "The Man from Atlantis," Mary Crosby "Dynasty," Samantha Doane "The Gauntlet," Linda Purl "Matlock," Natasha Richardson "Patty Hearst," Karen Black "Police Story: Confessions of a Lady Cop," Linda Hamilton "Murder She Wrote," Melanie Griffith "She's in the Army Now," Tovah Feldshuh "Terror out of the Sky," Dee Wallace "The Howling," Kim Cattrall "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries," Barbara Hershey "From Here to Eternity," Heather Menzies "Logan's Run," and many more.By 1978 Marneen had become somewhat of an Angelina Jolie, in smaller roles, but never the less, performing her own stunts when landing acting roles. She kept her stunt woman day job as her career transformed from stunt woman to stunt actress to respected character actress. She got cast in more stunt actress jobs by famous directors like Stanley Kramer "The Runner Stumbles," Irwin Allen "The Swarm," Peter Medak "Otherworld," and James Fargo "Scarecrow and Mrs. King" to name a few. She got cast as an actress and stunt-actress to work opposite in scenes with A-List actors like Clint Eastwood "The Gauntlet," Dick Van Dyke "The Runner Stumbles," Jeff Goldblum "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Bruce Boxleitner "Scarecrow and Mrs. King," Fred MacMurray and Olivia DE Havilland "The Swarm," George Kennedy "Airport 79 - The Concord," Mary Waronov and Marjoe Gortner "Hellhole," and others. From 1979-1985 Marneen received professional training as an actress by celebrity acting coaches, Jeff Corey "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," and Victor French son-in-law to the great Lee J. Cobb and co-star on two Emmy winning series with Michael Landon, "Little House on the Prairie" and "Highway to Heaven." It was during those years that Marneen set new goals to become a famous actress one day as she also appeared in fifteen theatrical productions throughout the Los Angeles area.Marneen's dreams to become a famous actress finally started to come true by the mid-80s when she became the first woman to come from the pure stunt arena to land the large co-star role in the Arkoff International Production of "Hellhole" as the religious insanity victim who receives the chemical lobotomy in highly dramatic scenes opposite Mary Woronov and Marjoe Gortner. During the filming director, Pierre DeMoro was quoted saying, "Marneen Fields displays a Sissy Spacek star quality." By 1988 Marneen Fields received significant industry recognition as an actress when she found herself featured on the coveted page three of "Star Magazine" in an article titled, "Clint Eastwood's Hug Changed My Life: Shapely Stunt Gal is Now an Actress." The article displayed a sexy glamour photo of Marneen taken by celebrity photographer Alan Houghton (Sophia Loren, Natalie Wood, and Kim Basinger). During the photo-shoot, Alan told Marneen she was the most versatile actress he had ever photographed.Cut to, a wicked twist of fate involving a near-fatal car accident that derailed Marneen's blossoming acting career and ended her stunt and stunt acting careers. Marneen's personal life ironically imitating her creative life of surviving disasters on screen. With years lost to recovery from the crash that required a series of life-threatening abdominal operations, along with a diagnosis of third stage melanoma and losing part of her right thigh to the disease. Marneen spent the next decade not fighting Freddy Krueger as she did in "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge," but fighting for her life while enduring heights of continual excruciating pain. For a decade, Marneen never thought she would return to doing normal everyday tasks like hanging laundry, let alone ever get on her feet again to perform. After fifteen years of extremely stressful career demands performing dangerous falls onto her spinal column doing stunt work, combined with the near-fatal car crash, and numerous pelvic operations, these tragedies would leave Marneen having to live and deal with significant Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the rest of her life.By channeling a resilience and a faith that has defined Marneen's life so far, she fought through the pain and faced all the world could throw at her by learning to roll with the punches. In the end she would emerge from this lonely tunnel of horrors spiritually heartbroken, physically shattered, and emotionally devastated. Eventually, she found the courage to summon her enormous reserves of strength and find a new belief in triumphantly reinventing herself. Today she continues to act and has become a potent force both in the public spotlight as an award-winning pop-blues-soft rock singer, and behind the scenes as a scriptwriter, ASCAP composer, producer, director, and an author. Healed by music and reaching her childhood dreams to become a famous singer, Marneen has breathed new life, direction, and purpose into her career. Her rich, passionate, alto voice compared to the late Grammy Hall of Fame artist Whitney Houston, while her pop-rock compositions have been compared to acclaimed Grammy-winning songwriter Diane Warren.2020 will see two books about Marneen's life and career publish, "Cartwheels & Halos: The True Marneen Lynne Fields Story" and "Rollin' with the Punches: An Examination of the Stunt and Acting Careers of Marneen Fields. (40 Years of Surviving Highfalls, Hellholes, and Freddy's Fingernails)." In 2019 Marneen published an eBook, paperback book, and audio-book she's written on the craft of acting titled, "The Illusive Craft of Acting: An Actor's Preparation Process." The books are available on Amazon, Smashwords, CDBaby, and all the popular outlets as are her original award-winning compositions.