Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have come a long way from a girl with pigtails and acne showing up and going, 'Hey guys, I'm here! Where do you want me to fall over?'
In our case, with 'Raze,' we had a really, really tight schedule. We shot something like 17 fights in three and a half weeks which is insane.
It never occurred to me that being a stunt girl would get me recognized in any way, because the whole purpose of a stunt person is to not be known.
When I'm a stunt woman on a movie, I'm strictly a 'Yes sir,' girl... But acting puts more in your hands, and producing gives you more control still.
I had to paint the picture that I was never scared, otherwise I couldn't do my job. But now, as an actor, I'm literally paid to look emotionally accessible.
I keep myself safe both physically and emotionally in my working environment by 'being one of the boys.' In my head, subconsciously, that was my safe place.
In my career as a double, a lot of my job is to not just do the fights to make them look cool, but also to appear as the same person as the actor I am playing.
My job has always been to not only make my character look like a badass but to also make the actor I am fighting opposite to be the character they need to be too.
I think I'm one of those actors who has come around the backside of something, you know? I came in the backdoor without even realizing that that's what I was doing.
My job as a double was always to put [actors] at ease. My job was to make my character, or the actress that I was doubling, look as badass as possible by being there.
I've always had a fascination with gymnastics, since I was a kid. It was the one thing at the Olympics that I would be like, 'Mom can I stay up late to watch gymnastics?'
The thing that I come across is that people think that I might actually be super aggressive, want-to-fight type in real life. The irony is that that's just not true, at all.
I did drama at school and when I was doubling Xena, one time for my birthday mom and dad bought me an acting course 'cause I've always liked the performance side of anything.
Having been a stunt girl for so long, a big part of my job, when being a stunt double, was to not just make the other person look as cool as they could, but also to act as support.
I'm not fighting to be treated like a dude. I don't want to be treated like a man. I want to be treated as a talented stunt-person, or I want to be treated as an intelligent person.
I don't know, I'm still a little bit like, when you blend CGI well with real life, it's impressive, but if you remove real life completely, I still get pulled out of the movie a bit.
I got a pair of roller skates for Christmas when I was 4 or 5 or something, so I had a pair as kid. But I also lived on a gravel road so I wasn't really skating up and down the street.
If it wasn't for 'Kill Bill' I probably would have been back in New Zealand three months after I left, and if it wasn't for 'Death Proof' I don't think I would be pursuing an acting career right now.
My strengths, I think, are that I deal really well with people. I like people. I'm fascinated by how they work so I'm good at handling situations between departments on set or pre-production or post.
Life's too short to be super conservative but it's also too short to make it any shorter. I don't plan on dying early, but at the same time I don't plan on playing it so safe that I'll live to ninety.
I think because I am a physical person, and because my way of expressing and performing and storytelling or explaining has always been with my body, if I can combine the two I find it really liberating.
Raze' is a horror/action film and they asked me to get involved when it was just in the developmental stage - they also brought be on board as one of the producers and that is really what drew me to it.
I'm certainly not on a mission to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress, any more than I am just to be able to get roles that are exciting and satisfying to me. If that means action, then that means action.
I'm completely at ease on a set. I'm pretty comfortable most places, but hitting the mark and knowing set etiquette and understanding cameras and lenses are second nature. It's a language I've spoken for years.
Some of my best friends are like, "I love that you are just the biggest pussy on the planet." And I have no problem with it at all, I love it. But it took a long time to understand that that's a part of my tapestry.
I don't have children, but when I meet my friends' kids at six months old, and then I don't see them again for another six months, the changes are drastic. But if you've seen them every day, the changes are less shocking.
The physical element of a role is something I'm super familiar with, and I love it. I've definitely made the transition into acting over doubling, just because I needed to make it clear to myself, so that I fully committed.
Basically, I'd finished doing gymnastics when I was 15, 16, but I'd stayed training because I'd just sort of loved it, and I'd met a man by the name of Peter Bell - no relation - who it turns out was a stuntman in New Zealand.
Actually my relationships with my girlfriends have become that much deeper and more profound, because I'm like, huh, yeah, I don't have to judge you, or you judge me. It was a lot of - I didn't want to be that crazy girlfriend.
I've always loved the collaborative side of filmmaking, and there's a lot of things I can do in the acting side of things in terms of the creating of action sequences, and coming up with ways of doing things with a stunt coordinator.
When being a stunt double, my job has always a supportive role, which is interesting, really. Part of what I really like about it is making a situation where people can just come out of their shell and be super bad-ass. That's exciting!
The producing thing has come quite naturally to me. I feel like for directing, I would like to be more technically-savvy. I want to have the language under my belt, and I also want it to be a project that is very personal to me, for my first one.
Part of the joy I'm discovering in acting is the fact that it's uncomfortable to me, that it's challenging, and the possibilities of always being able to improve on something, of always being able to try something new, it's intriguing and exciting.
Actors always ask their directors what their motivation is in this scene or that scene, so I've always had this joke where I ask the director what my motivation is too. As a stunt person your motivation is usually to fall over a bench or something.
I was interested in seeing how to branch out and sort of use the Internet more as a way of making and promoting movies. There's no real difference in making it successful - it's all down to the dedication of the people involved to make it a success.
One of the things I really like about TV is the family, the maintaining of the family camaraderie. Film has it, too, especially when you're on location. It's like summer camp. You'll get really close, really fast. But, then you'll have to say goodbye.
A couple years in [to acting], I recognized that I developed methods from being a stuntwoman for so long that worked for me that I wasn't aware of. And I had to become aware of them, because I didn't recognize that I could actually apply them across the board.
I met this group of stunt people and it was like, I had found family instantly. We're all a variety of different personalities, but whatever that mutual joy or appreciation of the work is, I'd not felt it like that before. It was, 'Yeah, I'd like to do this forever.'
When I was injured after 'Kill Bill' I had a year where I not just couldn't make any money but I couldn't swim, I couldn't surf, I could hardly run, which is insane. I couldn't do gymnastics, martial arts, I could barely crawl on all fours. That was devastating to me.
What really sells a fight, and any kind of action, is the performance of it. If someone is uncomfortable or uncertain about doing action because they're too concerned about their safety or about being right, it pulls them out of being that character, in that situation.
Having been a stunt girl for so long, a big part of my job was to not just make the other person look as cool as they could, but also to act as a support. My job was to make them as safe as they could be, so that they could be as explosive and as emotionally engaged as they could be.
There is an art to acting, and there are techniques that are acquired. You can be as emotional as you'd like, as a person, but figuring out ways that you can bring specific emotions at specific times and have them be true, and relating to someone as someone that they're not, is a lot.
Being a stunt girl is very much my comfort zone, so I had to remove the comfort zone to step fully into the slightly scarier zone. Also, just being perceived as an actor by the outside world, rather than as the stunt girl who does dialogue, has been a part of the challenge in front of me.
When I worked on 'Xena' I had to concentrate on fighting like Lucy Lawless. In 'Kill Bill' I not only had to stop fighting like Lucy, after three years of copying her moves, but start fighting like a Wu Shu martial artist. I'd never done Wu Shu before so mentally it was a massive challenge.
My favorite thing in moviemaking is to shoot in chronological order if at all possible, because it just helps for continuity and all the logistical purposes. It also helps with performance and the journey of each character, but I also think it's good for the director and everyone [else] involved.
I love the idea of doing comedy, whether it's action comedy or just straight comedy. It's such a big, new world for me that I'm starting to realize that any character that I relate to, in any way, shape or form, or that I have any appreciation for, given enough preparation, I can find that person.
Usually, what happens with women that aren't comfortable with fighting is they're afraid of getting hurt, or hurting someone. All it usually takes to get them going is to make them feel safe, and make them feel like they look cool while doing it. And once they get a little more comfortable, they're gung ho!
When I started to trust myself to be an actor, and to be considered that way and consider myself, that is when people started to see me in that way because that was the truth then, as opposed to me being a stunt girl going, 'Please see me as an actor, please see me as an actor!' when I didn't see myself that way.
As a stunt woman, I took it upon myself to be a bit of a jock about it. So you wouldn't see me vulnerable, you wouldn't see me hurting or sad because I was there as a professional to do my job. Nobody likes to see a girl get hurt - that's the truth of it - so I had to put them at ease so they would let me do my job.
Work wise, as a stunt woman, I enjoy telly - or TV - because - and, as an actor - I kind of enjoy the urgency of it. I enjoy the problem-solving that's happening. Right now, we don't have time to rehearse for hours. And, if something goes wrong, we don't have time to shoot something else for four days until we sort it out.