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Me and my stuntman

I’m like a nervous schoolgirl with my stuntman

Steven Berkoff

Wednesday, 12th December 2007

The actor's stunt double makes him feel like a schoolgirl

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.

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Imagine the terror of the Chinese officials

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Mark Leonard, Britain’s pre-eminent analyst of modern China, says the Olympic genie is out of the bottle. The prospect of global scrutiny has actually increased repression as the authorities try to stamp out dissent. But digital technology is impossible to police

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