IN NEW BOOK, HOLLYWOOD STUNTWOMAN RECOUNTS HEALING AFTER CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE

In GLIMMER, Kimberly Shannon Murphy (one of Cameron Diaz's besties) describes how childhood trauma altered her life path

By all accounts, Kimberly Shannon Murphy is fearless; it's a requirement of her profession. Throughout her high-powered career as a Hollywood stuntwoman, Murphy has performed in more than 100 feature films and TV shows, deftly risking literal life and limb while doubling for actors like Cameron Diaz, Uma Thurman, and Kaitlin Olson.

But beneath her kick-butt blond veneer, Murphy has fought the most torturous battle of her life: recovering from childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her grandfather.

In her tragic but inspiring memoir, GLIMMER: A Story of Survival, Hope, and Healing, which Murphy says she wrote "for survivors," she documents not just the harm she endured as a little girl, but the ways generational trauma (others in her family, including her mother, were allegedly abused by the same man) colored each part of her world, from her career choices to her romantic life. Read an excerpt of the book below this story.

"My family growing up … kind of revolved around image and looks, and you find that a lot in abusive families," Murphy tells PEOPLE. "It's like we want to look a certain way on the outside because our insides are completely a disaster."

Before getting into stunts, Murphy worked as a dancer in New York: a world teeming with body image issues. She embraced the chaos, riding a rollercoaster of bulimia, self-harm, drug use and bad relationships. She eventually "...gravitated toward [stunt work instead] because it was something that gave me a sense of control with my own body," she explains. "I spent so many years of my life not having that feeling of control and not having that feeling of my body belonging to me."

Though the external still matters in the stunt world, Murphy refuses to let it define her. In GLIMMER, she describes smashing her scale against her garden wall in an act of body-positive post-childbirth defiance, writing, "Never again will I let a number tell me how I should feel about myself."

Plus, in stunts, the focus is on being strong enough to pull off unthinkable feats. "When I started, that was the era where everyone was just super skinny … and now that's shifting and changing, which is great, and people are more accepting that we have actual bodies."

In her thirties, Murphy married Casey O'Neill, a stunt coordinator she met on set when they doubled as Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise on the film Knight and Day (talk about a power-couple!). Today, she's in a solid place when it comes to her emotional well-being, though Murphy knows, more than anyone, there's no finish line when it comes to healing.

"You always have those moments of doubt or insecurity or struggles or falling back into old habits," she says. But her husband and their 8-year-old daughter -- plus various types of therapy -- help keep her centered.

"I always knew that I was meant to do something big with my life. I was just so confused as to what that exactly was," Murphy says of her twisting life path. Excavating the worst memories of her childhood by writing them down in journals helped her process what happened to her. Murphy eventually shared those journals with Cameron Diaz, a close friend who has long cheered her on (Diaz also wrote the foreword to GLIMMER; read the excerpt below for details on their first meeting).

Eventually, all that self-reflection helped inform her finished book. "This is something that I've been wanting to do for 20 years and have never been in a head space to be able to actually accomplish it," Murphy says.

Her aim? For the book to be a beacon for others struggling toward healing. "I wrote this for my 15-year-old self. ... I want this book to be something that somebody can pick up, and it will change their life."

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  • Excerpt from GLIMMER, copyright © 2023 by Kimberly Shannon Murphy. Published by Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins. Reprinted by permission.NIGHT AND DAY2009

    Thirty-two years old

    The stunt crew for the action movie Knight and Day is topnotch—all the best guys from LA. I’m starting to earn some respect, but it would only take one mistimed leap or bad landing to lose it. Though no one’s said it to my face, I know the story about me: I’m only here because I’m Cameron’s friend.

    ***

    Two years ago, I was hired to double Cameron for the screwball rom-com What Happens in Vegas. I liked her from the moment she stuck out her hand and said, “Hi! I’m Cameron!” She looked directly into my eyes, and I found myself looking right back into hers—something that’s never been easy for me.

    I couldn’t stop watching her, that first day on set. She wasn’t just beautiful, she was kind and gracious. Every couple hours she’d look around and say with a laugh, “Guys, don’t we have the best job ever?!” No matter who you were—craft service, a grip, a PA—she knew your name.

    Late in the afternoon, Cameron had one last costume change to make, and the trailers were far away from the set. “No worries!” she told the crew. “I can do a quick change while the girls cover me, so everyone doesn’t have to wait.”

    Normally, I keep to myself on set, but I mustered the courage to run and grab a stunt mat, then helped her all-female team hold it up as a makeshift dressing room. As we shielded her, giggling like high school girls, I looked around at the others and loved them all instantly.

    At the end of the day, I took a chance and handed Cameron my homemade business card, which had a picture of me doing aerial work for the performance troupe AntiGravity.

    Cameron gasped. “You do this?”

    I nodded. “Before I did stunts, I was a professional acrobat.”

    “Oh my God, will you teach me?” She was practically jumping up and down.

    “I’d be happy to!” Was this really happening?

    Cameron grabbed a piece of paper and jotted down a number.

    A few days later, I stood waiting for one of the most famous actresses in the world outside of an acrobatics school in Bedford-Stuyvesant. A black town car turned up the industrial, windswept block and out she jumped, greeting me with a big hug. No posse, no bodyguards, just her.

    I figured I’d spend the entire session teaching her to climb the silks, but she shimmied twenty-five feet up to the rafters on her first try.

    “Like this?” she called down, beaming. Oh crap, I thought, looking up at her. What next? I ended up teaching her a basic foot lock and a few other moves, which she aced. And we were done.

    “Do you have a car coming?” I asked.

    Cameron shook her head. “Where’s the subway?”

    “Oh, you want to take the subway?” Did movie stars know how to do that? Cameron assured me she always took the train, and we walked together to the station.

    “Go,” she said, when the eastbound L pulled up first. I shook my head, insisted on waiting to put her on the Manhattan-bound.

    Over the course of working together on Vegas, and a year later on a thriller called The Box, Cameron and I grew closer, bonding over our strong work ethics and bleeding hearts. I learned that everything she had, she’d worked her ass off for, too.

    In the early years of our friendship, part of me was afraid Cameron would figure out what a mess I was, emotionally speaking. But when she asked to see some of my writing, I couldn’t help myself. The very next day, I dropped a thick stack of pages—filled with graphic descriptions of my childhood abuse and some pretty gory revenge fantasies—with her doorman.

    The regret swooped in as soon as I left the building. Surely, I’d just doomed our friendship. Now she’d just pity me. Or think I was a psychopath. I couldn’t decide which was worse.

    But it turned out Cameron thought neither. The next time I saw her, she told me how sorry she was for what I’d been through. She said she hoped writing it down was cathartic for me, and whenever I wanted to talk, she was there.

    Then she said, “So listen! I have this script for a movie with Tom Cruise. Do you want to do it with me?”

    ***

    Two weeks into shooting Knight and Day in Boston, there are whisperings about them bringing in a more experienced girl for the motorcycle scenes. I get why, but I’m determined to show them I can handle it. I’ve become close with Tom’s motorcycle double in rehearsals, but his main double, Casey O’Neill, is more of a mystery.

    On the final day of the Boston segment, the whole team is supposed to meet for a farewell dinner, but only Casey and I show up. Both of us are tired and looking forward to an early night. I have a 6:00 AM flight to Spain in the morning to shoot the motorcycle scenes I convinced them to let me do. Casey’s headed to Austria to film a rooftop fight with Tom.

    “How do you meet all these women?” I say to Casey, who’s been silencing his buzzing phone all night. “Do you just go around telling people you’re Tom Cruise’s stunt double, and everyone wants to date you?”

    Casey laughs, shaking his head. He’s cute. Older than me, but younger than Tom. Real all-American-looking, and very professional and respectful.

    Casey’s phone buzzes. I wave my hand. “If you need to go, you can go.”

    “I’m exactly where I want to be,” he replies, putting his phone in his back pocket.

    There’s a glint to Casey now. Is he flirting? Am I?

    I slap my credit card down on the table, surprised to hear myself say, “Should we get a drink?”

    At a dive across the street, we rehash the morning’s car chase. I was in the back seat in a yellow bridesmaid dress, reaching over a dead guy in the front to (supposedly) drive the car. Casey rode on the roof. He’s so easy to talk to, I’m actually starting to let down my guard….

    Then I see it—across the bar, next to the rows of liquor bottles: a plastic cup of cocktail stirrers, like the ones my grandfather kept on his basement bar.

    Just like that, everything good slips away.

    I’m back in the basement.

    Kimberly, what’s your favorite color? He rattles the cocktail stirrers, laughing.

    I shake my head so hard I see stars.

    Well, then—he grabs the whole fistful—I’ll just have to use them all.

    Pain shoots up my pelvis, up from his world.

    “Hey—you okay?” Casey’s voice barely registers, but it does. Miraculously, it does.

    Head low, I grip the bar. He’s dead, you’re safe, he’s dead, you’re safe, I tell myself.

    “Kimberly?”

    I run outside, into the bitter air.

    We share a cab in silence. Casey probably doesn’t know what a flashback looks like, but he doesn’t ask me to explain. Even stranger, he doesn’t try to kiss me. Could he possibly not want anything for his time and patience tonight? How could that be? It must be an act, to break down my defenses.

    “Can I walk you in?” he asks, outside my hotel.

    I shake my head. Not because this handsome man’s kindness might be a ploy, but because I wouldn’t know what to do with him if it weren’t.

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2023-06-01T15:29:16Z dg43tfdfdgfd