Pulling the stunts

On November 20, millions of people across Europe and America will be flocking to the cinema to catch the new Bond film Die Another Day - and they’ll witness one of the most spectacular and daring car chases in cinematic history.

In a stunt orchestrated by veteran stuntman Vic Armstrong, James Bond is chased in his silver Aston by bad guy Zao in an equally speedy green Jaguar across a frozen lake, avoiding icebergs as they drive and not knowing whether the ice will give way beneath them.

The same can be said for the two stuntmen, George Cottle and Ray De-Haan, who were driving the cars. Shot in Iceland, the ice was only eight inches thick and, as director Lee Tamahori says, was "a bit perilous".

But Armstrong, 55, knows a thing or two about danger having been a stuntman for 37 years. With the ice chase in Die Another Day, however, there was a lot of luck on his side – the crew were blessed with an unusually low temperature that froze the ice just enough. So the risk paid off and Armstrong can claim responsibility for a unique car chase captured on celluloid.

“The great thing about it is no-one will probably be able to shoot there again because the ice is going to melt – it was the coldest winter in 65 years,” he says. “The chances of anyone else getting what we’ve got is very minimal.”

Armstrong’s job on Die Another Day was as second unit director, co-coordinating the stunts rather than doing them. It’s the usual progression of stuntmen to move on to directing stunts and Armstrong’s wealth of experience has made him one of the most in demand stunt coordinators in the business.

The Oscar-winning stuntman, who won an Academy award for the stunt equipment he’s invented over the years, is listed in the Guinness Book Of Records as the world’s most prolific stuntman having worked on many Bond films, the Star Wars films, the Superman films and the Indiana Jones films, amongst others. In fact Armstrong could have made a living alone from doubling for Harrison Ford, which he has done on many of Ford’s films.

“If Harrison wasn’t such a great actor, he’d make a good stuntman,” says Armstrong. “He really is good and I’ve got to arm wrestle him to stop him doing the stunts.

“There was one instance on Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade where I was going to jump 15 foot off a rock onto a horse that was going by, knock the horse and the man down, hold the horse down, punch the guy out, put my leg back over the horse, horse jumps up underneath me and I gallop out kicking someone down on the way.

“Harrison was insistent that he did it so I took him round the back of the rock and said ‘Look Harrison, you’re costing me a fortune, we get extra money for doing these stunts and if you keep doing them all we get nothing’ and he said ‘Oh my God, what an idiot, I’m sorry Vic, if I do that again just kick me in the arse’. That was the only way I could stop him.”

Armstrong got into stunt work by chance. A budding steeplechase jockey, his father was a racehorse trainer who trained English actor Richard Todd, best known for playing Robin Hood.

Talking to Todd about the movies got the young Armstrong interested in the stunt side of film-making and when he was 18, a stuntman called Jimmy Lodge came to train with Armstrong’s father.

Lodge was working on a film called Arabesque and, seeing that Armstrong was an accomplished rider, he hired him to ride horses in the film.

“I was there for about three weeks,” remembers Armstrong. “It was £20 a day and I’d never seen such money in my life so I decided that this is what I wanted to do.

“Jimmy had just come back from Spain so I was excited at the thought of going abroad and having the hotel paid for. And I was fascinated by it because it’s such an exciting game.”

As most stuntmen at the time were ex-military men in their 40s, Armstrong’s youth got him a lot of work very quickly as, with actor’s egos being what they are, Armstrong was often picked by them as being the man they most looked like.

Now, with an unrivalled body of stunt work behind him, Armstrong has lent his talents to PlayStation’s latest game Stuntman, advising the game’s makers and helping make it as realistic as possible.

“Sony came to me two years ago when I was doing Gangs Of New York in Rome,” says Armstrong. “They wanted to make the game as authentic as they could and talk to a stuntman who had a broad knowledge of the business.

“I’ve overseen all the different stages of the game and they came down three or four times on the Bond and they came to Gangs Of New York just to observe how the stunts are achieved. The wanted to get that realism into the game.”

With Stuntman whetting the appetites of game players around the country for a piece of the action, Armstrong is sure that the game will ignite more interest in the real-life profession. But he says that you have to be a certain type of person to be a stuntman.

“Being a stuntman isn’t about being crazy,” he says. “It’s the exact opposite of that. Stunt work is control, calmness, rational thinking, good reflexes, athletic ability and good attitude. And a lot of hard work.

“To begin in the stunt business you have to have one skill. It doesn’t matter what it is, mine was horse-riding, but you have to be a specialist in one thing. You might be a good high-diver, a good driver, a gymnast – that’s what you’ll get hired for. Invariably people can pick up those other skills along the way.”