I’m like a nervous schoolgirl with my stuntman

The stunt double does all the hard stuff that you the actor either cannot do or should not do lest you injure yourself, and are out of the movie. I have a very pleasant stunt double, a ‘Berliner’, he confides to me proudly, a real one, he adds. I am running from my tormentor and leap from the balcony on to some scaffolding but there is a gap of about four feet and a drop of about 20 feet, so real injury should he slip, and I sweat just at the thought of it. I ask him how he will leap off the narrow ledge since he has to leap up to the ledge and then a further leap to the scaffold. He says he’s not sure yet, in a nonchalant way and with no sense of the slightest danger. He is used to this. He is a stuntman. The stuntman faces danger and does not blink. In fact, he is challenged by the danger, challenged by what makes actors tremble in their socks.

He makes it all right, and when he lands the film cuts to find me ‘landing’ or rather crouching as he did when he landed on the wooden planks. The planks on the scaffolding are not much more than three feet wide but they are 20 feet up and I must look as if I’ve landed, then turn and step on to a ledge leading to an alcove. The director has been looking forward to this scene since he is enamoured of hair-raising events. However, I have somewhat dashed his enthusiasm by revealing that I can’t bear heights. I become ashamed of my puny fears when I see electricians clambering all over the scaffolding preparing it for the next scene. My stuntman Steve, the ‘Berliner’, however seems aware of my dilemma and offers to acclimatise me to it slowly.