Why Kaitlin Olson Did Her Own Stunts On It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

What do Jackie Chan, Tom Cruise, and Kaitlin Olson all have in common? All three actors have done their own stunts. Chan and Cruise have built their careers on their penchant for death-defying stunts, but fans of FX's "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" know that Olson deserves respect for a devotion to physical comedy that has, on occasion, taken a masochistic turn.

From running head-first into a car door to getting stuck in a waterslide with a pile of feral kids slamming into her, Olson has put herself in harm's way when she thought it would serve a gag better than using her stunt double. "There's a lot of acting that happens between the running out and the head hitting," Olson told Buzzfeed. She's paid the price for these stunts too, breaking various bones and even ripping her calf open.

Co-star Charlie Day recounted how they had originally brought in a stunt woman to film the sequence where Dee tries — and fails — to shoplift while wearing stilettos, smashing her head into that car door, but it "didn't look very real" with another actress doing the bit. So Olson jumped back in, taking the fall herself, and created what Day called "one of the funniest moments of physical comedy ... in the history of the show."

For the "Always Sunny" star, her physical comedy pays tribute to the role models who inspired her to become an actor in the first place. "My role models were always women who were not afraid to look ridiculous," Olson told Esquire. "But when I was little, women on TV were just pretty, cute, or on soap operas. Every once in a while, you'd get a Carol Burnett or a Gilda Radner. Later on, you'd get Julia Louis-Dreyfus, or 'Saturday Night Live' characters, who were just not concerned about what they looked like. It was way more about giving 100% of yourself."

Olson now plays double duty on "Sunny" and the ABC crime procedural "High Potential."