Born June 23, 1957, in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Peter Kent was predestined to be a thrillseeker and adrenaline addict. As a young child, raised along the banks of the often treacherous Seymour River, he was shooting rapids and climbing the highest trees available, then letting himself fall through the branches to the ground, or pedaling his bicycle across planks placed 12 feet atop the family’s laurel hedge to get the desired adrenaline rush, usually resulting in lacerations and stitches.
On another occasion he tried to extract his own loose teeth with a hammer in the family garage. At six years of age his parents divorced and he moved to New Jersey with his mother, a move responsible for the dual Canadian-US citizen…
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Born June 23, 1957, in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Peter Kent was predestined to be a thrillseeker and adrenaline addict. As a young child, raised along the banks of the often treacherous Seymour River, he was shooting rapids and climbing the highest trees available, then letting himself fall through the branches to the ground, or pedaling his bicycle across planks placed 12 feet atop the family’s laurel hedge to get the desired adrenaline rush, usually resulting in lacerations and stitches.
On another occasion he tried to extract his own loose teeth with a hammer in the family garage. At six years of age his parents divorced and he moved to New Jersey with his mother, a move responsible for the dual Canadian-US citizenship which would come in so useful later in life.
Returning again to Canada at age 11, he and his mother ran a local bed-and-breakfast style boarding house while he attended Nanaimo Senior Secondary school on Vancouver Island, and worked in the usual variety of West Coast jobs: Sawmill, salmon fishing, pulp mill, paving crew, bouncer and electronics salesperson in both the towns of Nanaimo and Victoria. He also worked on the road as a sound engineer for various Canadian bands, for five bohemian years.
Nearly killed in a terrible motor vehicle accident in the early 1980s, he survived only through willpower. Multiple skull fractures, broken cheekbones, a crushed nose and a fractured jaw transformed his look, some say, to closely resemble actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. This was to prove fateful indeed. In 1984, having done Shakespeare in various local theater groups, he decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue a film career, although he had no previous film experience or acquaintances in Los Angeles. After living in the notorious YMCA off Hollywood’s infamous Sunset Strip for a tenuous and outrageous six months, he was taken under the wing of James Cameron to double Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984).
His minimal stunt experience did not stop him from quickly learning the ropes and becoming one of the most celebrated and highly paid stuntmen in the business. His association with Schwarzenegger lasted 14 films and 13 years, both as friend, workout partner, ski buddy, confidant, chef and dialogue coach. His apprenticeship on 14 of Schwarzenegger’s films (from “Terminator” to Jingle All the Way (1996)) has put Kent in a position to understand that genre better than most, and having access to a variety of the best screenplays in Hollywood, was to again prove useful in later years.
While making Eraser (1996), Kent was almost killed when he was struck by a three-ton shipping container 100 feet in the air. It was then he decided to pursue a different, less life-threatening line of work, seeing as how he had been injured in some way during nearly all of Schwarzegenner’s pictures. Using material from a friend who had been in the British military, Kent wrote the screenplay “Featherman”, based on the Special Air Service (SAS), the famous British anti-terrorist unit, in Northern Ireland, as a vehicle for himself to star in.
He has studied with several different Los Angeles-based drama groups, but his longtime coach has been Zina Provendie, former head of MGM’s drama department for 26 years, and coach to James Dean in Giant (1956), as well as Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra (1963). Returning to Vancouver after a 14-year absence, Kent is among the busiest actors in town, nailing 14 TV series in as many months, and was cas as “Benny” in the Bill Pullman film The Guilty (2000).
Kent has been interviewed in numerous publications, including “Extra”, “People Magazine”, Germany’s “Der Stern”, as well as London’s “Daily Mirror”, “The New York Times”, “Dallas Star”, “Los Angeles Times” and hundreds of TV and radio stations worldwide.
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