Career Advice: How to Be a Motorcycle Stuntman

By Sam Bendall - October 17, 2016

You’ve seen the movies, the commercials, the explosions, and most definitely the far-fetched jumps, crashes and stunts. While some of these are certainly computer generated, some are totally real.

In every action movie it is never the big-name Hollywood actors who take all the real big risks. Those risks are reserved for the stunt men and women who crash, explode, shoot, fall, tumble, and wither away time-after-time. Doing stunt for a career is difficult and dangerous, but knowing the risks and how to manage them is the only way to ensure some level of safety.

Being a stunt person is not by any means an easy career. It takes considerable skill and talent in a number of fields to even be considered for many roles even if you have the necessary skills. For starters, you must be a member of an elite organization to be considered for roles; Rick English, a Professional Hollywood stunt performer admits that stunt professionals must have an extremely high level of competence in at least six different sporting disciplines before even being able to apply for roles.

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Rick’s career background resides in motorcycle racing and martial arts, and has nearly 100 feature film and TV credits to his name. It took him nearly four years to train the other disciplines in order for him to be considered by the organization he is now currently a member of. Starting out in the industry is pretty tough to say te least.

Rick English wrote this in a one-on-one with Motorcycle News about how he keeps his skills sharp and what it takes to be a stunt person in the industry. “As a stunt performer you have to gain people’s trust and prove yourself every time you work with someone new. People are relying on you to be accurate and in control so as not to place yourself or any of the cast or crew at unnecessary risk.”

“It’s really important to keep sharp and on top of your game by riding all the time, even after a 14-hour day. I also watch a lot of motorcycle racing, stunt riding, and even crashes as you can learn from it. Before I performed the high-side on Mission Impossible 5 in this picture, I watched hundreds of clips of racing crashes to see which one had the right look and was achievable under film conditions. But the week before we flew out to Morocco to film the bike sequence, Bautista had a huge high side in MotoGP qualifying, which is something we’ve never really seen in movies before and would look great in the chase!”

“You have to be adaptable and versatile as you never know what bike you’ll have to ride next. So you’ll need to keep yourself at as high a level as possible in stunt riding, road racing, motocross, enduro, trials etc. You’d be brought into a movie for a specific skill and expertise so you’ll need to express your opinions on what works and what doesn’t but you must also be adaptable, work through problems and ultimately make the director’s vision come to life and make action sequences as good as they can be.