Photo: Patricia Tallman
Patricia Tallman was working at Macy's in New York when a friend suggested she try out as a stuntwoman.
She gave it a go, and earned more in a day than a month in retail - so quit the day job and started a 50-year career.
Tallman has since provided her high-octane services to numerous movies, including Austin Powers, Jurassic Park and Star Trek.
Inevitably, you get hurt in the job, she told RNZ's Afternoons.
"I was working on a movie ... we did a really tough, tough shootout scene, bad guys, good guys.
"I was playing a police officer who gets a shotgun blast to the chest. And you know how we exaggerate things in the movie industry? This was supposed to make me fly through the air and hit some steel doors collapse, obviously dead."
Although Tallman got up and walked away. she had broken her back, she said.
"I had a concussion. I had a broken finger, so I was more, kind of focussed on that.
"But I didn't realise that you could break your back and not know it, and I didn't realise that you could totally recover from something like that."
Patricia Tallman was Laura Dern's stunt double in Jurassic Park. Photo: AFP
The long-term wear and tear has taken its toll, she said.
"The arthritis has set in after decades of doing this. It's just like being a professional sports person. You just end up with years of concussions and contusions, and now you're constantly aching.
"I had to have a hip replaced and things like that."
One stunt of which she is particularly proud was in The Long Kiss Goodnight.
"I was doubling Geena Davis and they hung me off a crane over a quarry in the middle of the night in Toronto during the winter, and there was nothing I could do about whether I would survive or perish in this particular stunt, because they're just dropping me towards the camera 80 feet below.
"I'm hung on a wire, if that wire breaks, I'm a goner. And that stuff was the hardest for me to do because I it didn't depend on my experience or my expertise."
Listener questions
How does one become a stunt performer?
"In the US, at least, when I was getting started, it really had to do with going out and meeting other stunt people.
"And then you rather apprentice in a way, you volunteer your time, you help out around where they need you, and then they kind of train you up and see how you do.
"Eventually, they will probably get you a job that's of low consequence, just to see how you handle yourself on a set."
What's the pay like?
"The Screen Actors Guild is the union that we're all covered by, and it's now called SAG-AFTRA, and we would get a base pay of whatever the daily rate is and the day rates.
"It depends on the project, what the day rate is and what the union level is.
And then on top of that, depending on the stunt you do, you will get what they call a stunt bump.
"And the bump can be like $50, or it can be $5000, it can be $50,000.
How do you fall downstairs without hurting yourself?
"Visualisation. I had a stunt in a movie called Benefit of the Doubt. It starred Donald Sutherland, and I played in a flashback scene.
"I was his wife, and I did the stunts for this particular sequence as well, where Donald threw me down the stairs.
"So, I would mark out where I thought I would land from being pitched, and then how I would roll, like stair-by stair. So, I really knew where my body would go."
How's the health of the industry?
"We've always had to figure out how to survive in between, or to create our own projects. And I just think that that's never going to end, and you might as well make peace with it.
"I'm now 67 years old. I've been in the industry since I was 15. I've seen so much. There's always change. We always have to figure it out, and if you're not good at it, you're in the wrong business."
Do you have a high pain threshold?
"Yes, I do evidently! I didn't know I did. But I also will say, I get really pissed off if I'm hurting because I'm not doing stunts and I'm recovering from my hip surgery, and I'm very impatient with having pain that I don't feel like I deserve."
