Ryan Dunn of Jackass Fame Dies in Car Crash
The daredevil also hosted the MTV series Homewrecker and G4's Proving Ground.
Ryan Dunn, one of the stars of the outlandish MTV series Jackass, died June 20, 2011, in a car crash. He was 34.
Jackass, in which the cast members performed stunts ranging from the dangerous to the outright vulgar, made stars of such cast members as Johnny Knoxville and Bam Margera and spawned a media franchise that included feature films.
Dunn was a daredevil whose stunts included diving into a sewage tank wearing flippers, a mask and a snorkel. On another occasion, he inserted a toy car into his rectum.
At approximately 3:00 a.m., he reportedly was driving his 2007 Porsche in suburban Philadelphia when the vehicle went off the road into the woods and burst into flames. According to news reports, a passenger was also killed, but in the immediate aftermath of the collision, the individual’s name had not been released.
In addition to Jackass, Dunn appeared in MTV’s Viva La Bam and the three Jackass features. He also was the star of his own MTV show, Homewrecker, and hosted Proving Ground on the G4 cable network.
At the time of his passing, he had completed work on the yet-to-be-released feature film Living Will.
Born in Ohio, Dunn was 15 when his family relocated to Pennsylvania, where he said that he met Bam Margera on his first day of high school. The duo, along with other friends, made videos of themselves skateboarding and performing stunts.
Dunn was working as a welder and at a gas station when Knoxville, a friend of Margera’s through the skateboarding circuit, asked the crew to allow their videos to be part of the series Jackass, which aired on MTV from 2000 to 2002.