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.
Steven Berkoff
I’m like a nervous schoolgirl with my stuntman
The actor's stunt double makes him feel like a schoolgirl
issue 15 December 2007
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