Susan Backlinie Movies and Career Information

Susan Backlinie (born Susan Jane Swindall on September 1, 1946) is a former actress and stuntwoman. She is known for her role as Chrissie Watkins, the first victim in Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster Jaws. Along with being a stuntwoman specializing in swimming work, she was also an animal trainer. She currently works as a computer accountant in her birthplace of Ventura, California. Backlinie also appeared in Spielberg's film 1941 parodying her role in Jaws. Instead of being attacked by a shark during a midnight swim, she's "picked up" by a Japanese submarine. Backlinie also appeared in the film The Day of the Animals, regarded by some as a Jaws clone about nature gone bad. When Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss saw a daily of her performance of being attacked by the shark, he told her it absolutely terrified him. She appeared in her own pictorial ("The Lady and the Lion") in the January 1973 issue of Penthouse magazine.