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Professional stunt people have a tough gig. They do the most dangerous stuff on a film set, which is often the most exciting to watch for the audience, and yet the audience rarely knows who those people are. More than that, while we all know stunt people exist, Hollywood often seems to pretend like they don’t. Ryan Gosling, who will play a stuntman in The Fall Guy cast, knows very well what stuntpeople do for actors, and he hopes the new film helps give them some of the credit they deserve.
At a recent screening of The Fall Guy (via Variety) Ryan Gosling spoke, about what he called an “unspoken understanding” that stuntpeople are expected to not receive credit for their work, and that instead, the focus remains on the actor. Gosling takes a small step toward ending that understanding by admitting that he’s always used a stunt double, and he hopes stuntpeople continue to get more credit going forward. Gosling said…
I’ve basically had a stunt double my whole life. And there’s this sort of accepted dynamic where they come on set, they do all the cool stuff, they risk everything, and then they disappear into the shadows, and we all pretend as though they were never there. And you know, everyone else on set gets credit but there’s just some sort of unspoken understanding that they won’t. Well, that ends today!
While some actors do at least some of their own stunts, and others, like Tom Cruise, are known for doing all of their own stunts, stunt doubles are the rule rather than the exception. Most of the time studios (and insurance companies) don’t want actors doing their own stunt work because stunts can cause injuries and injuries to stars cost money. That injury is still possible for the stunt double, of course, but nobody seems to worry about them.
Stuntpeople have been gaining notoriety in recent years. Since 2007 the Screen Actors Guild has given an award for Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble, and there have been multiple calls, that are still ongoing, for an Academy Award to recognize stunt people. As Gosling says here, everybody else on set gets credit with awards and other accolades, but stuntpeople, with a few exceptions, do not.
Certainly, The Fall Guy movie about a stuntman, and directed by a former stuntman in David Leitch, may be a step in the right direction. The Fall Guy includes a world-record stunt, which obviously was performed by a stuntman. While Ryan Gosling, the actor who admits he has a stunt double, will be the face we always see on the screen, the movie will still tell the story of one of those overlooked stuntpeople who never gets the credit. Hopefully, it will help open some eyes to what stuntpeople do, why they’re so important, and why they should be recognized for it.