He’s been thrown through plate glass windows. He’s leapt from skyscraper roof to roof. He’s fought more fights than he can count. “There’s tons of stuff where you can see me get beat up or blown up,” he says. Charlie Ruedpokanon ’99 majored in architecture at Tech, but even then the martial arts were his passion. After school, he and his buds – known as FPTG (Five Phly Thai Guys) – practiced their moves and videotaped them.

Inspired by martial arts films, he headed to Asia after college with a stack of demo reels to break into that continent’s burgeoning action-film scene. While he still does stunts, he has since branched out to stunt coordination, and into acting – usually as the bad guy or the detective. He can be seen in the Netflix films Fistful of Vengeance and The Serpent, and was the stunt coordinator for the acclaimed 2022 film Tár. All told, he’s been in front of or behind the camera for 50 films. After doing the first scary stunt, Ruedpokanon says, “It becomes like a ride you enjoy in a theme park.”