"I started listening to my voice, and I never stopped," says Emily Allred Hutchison.
Emily Allred Hutchison, BFA ’78, has taken a little abuse lately. She’s been beaten up, blown up, shot, caught in a sword fight, and even hit by a ’51 Ford. The car accident was her favorite.
“That was flashy,” the 48-year-old says with a slight Southern accent. “It had a huge sawtooth bumper, so I had to throw my legs up high enough not to get hit by it.”
Hutchison is a stuntwoman living in Wilmington, N.C. Although she studied theater at the University of Denver “a lifetime ago,” she didn’t get involved in stunts until just three years ago after earning a black belt in karate (she also was teaching kickboxing at the time).
If you’re getting the idea that Hutchison has followed an unusual path, read on.
She also has been a dancer, a singer and, perhaps most surprising, an administrator in a drug and alcohol treatment center. Hutchison also works for a local psychiatrist three days a week, “doing the stuff he doesn’t want to do.”
She also is the booking manager and a backup singer in a group called “Hugo Duarte and the Full Sail Band,” with which she logged 40,000 road miles and 8,000 air miles on tour last year. This fall she plans to record her own music demo.
Oh, and she’s been married for 18 years and has a 16-year-old son.
Hutchison says she likes the adrenaline rush when she performs stunts, but the pay is unpredictable. She’s learned to “take the money and stash it” when she gets a good gig.
Although you could get the impression that Hutchison is a bit erratic, she actually is very grounded. For example, she’s recording the music demo because singing gives her more opportunities to perform.
“It’s a performance thing,” Hutchison says of her unique life. “I’ve had that bug since I was 17. I think there is a voice inside all of us that, when we hit 35, we say, ‘Naww, I can’t do that!’ I say that’s baloney. I started listening to my voice, and I never stopped. It tells me, ‘This is the way to go now,’ and I do it.”