Wonder Woman stunt double dead: Kitty O'Neil dies at 72

Daredevil O'Neil lost her hearing at just five months old but believed her deafness helped sharpened her other senses and played a part in her Hollywood success

Kitty O'Neil, who worked as Lynda Carter's stunt double on TV series Wonder Woman, has died at the age of 72.

She passed away at her home in South Dakota with reported Pneumonia.

In addition to her stint on Wonder Woman, O'Neil also appeared in Smokey and the Bandit II and The Blues Brothers.

It was while working as Lynda Carter's stuntwoman O' Neil that performed one of her most daring stunts - jumping from a 13 story building onto an inflatable air cushion below.

"If I hadn't hit the centre of the bag I would have probably been killed," she told the Washington Post after.

But O'Neil later topped that by jumping 180 feet from a helicopter.

As well as her success on screen, O Neil was also a daredevil in real life setting a land-speed record for women in 1976 - which is still to be beaten today.

O'Neil earned a placed in the record books by reaching a speed of 512mph in a rocket-powered vehicle named The Motivator.

Speaking in 2015, O Neil said she 'felt good' to have worked as one of Hollywood's stuntwomen. She added that she didn't feel 'afraid of anything.'

O'Neil lost her hearing at just five months old but believed her lack of hearing helped sharpen her other senses.

She told the Washington Post in 1979: "I know I'm deaf. But I'm still normal. The way I look at it, being handicapped is not a defect. People say I can't do anything. I say to people I can do anything I want."