Every question you've ever wanted to ask a celebrity stunt double.

Being a celebrity stunt double is a dream come true for most ten-year-old kids (and a lot of people three-times that age…cough…)

You get to learn epic tricks, star in blockbuster movies, meet celebrities, and apparently the on-set catering isn’t too shabby either.

Thanks to a Reddit Ask Me Anything with stunt double Laura Dash, who has dwarfism, and makes her living doubling child actors between the ages of 5 and 13, we now know everything we ever dreamed of knowing about the stunt double business. And the details are just as thrilling and gory as we hoped.

These were some of the best questions and answers.

Which movie was the most fun to make?

Dash says it would come down to a tie between Goonies and Hook.

“Goonies we got paid to go down waterslides, and on Hook just the sets were amazing, and the cast and the crew and I mean – we would be laughing every day,” she remembers.

What’s the craziest thing that’s happened while you were on set?

Dash was working on Jurassic Park on a small Hawaiian Island, when a hurricane hit. The cast and crew of the film were forced to hide out in the hotel basement for three days while the storm passed, playing UNO and eating scraps from the catering table.

Dash remembers being frightened, but notes, “We were in the same room with Spielberg and all the actors, and I thought “Hey, if Steven Spielberg didn’t get out, he’s still here, then we’re all gonna be fine.”

Spielberg and the actors ended up being airlifted from the island two days earlier than the rest of the crew, but everyone lived to tell the tale.

What’s the worst injury you’ve had during a stunt?

While working on a movie called Basketball, Dash was performing a stunt that involved sitting on a man’s shoulders, hitting her head on the top of the doorframe and falling backwards onto a mat (called a ‘follow pad’ because it follows the stunt double to catch them when they fall). Dash expressed some concerns about whether the follow pad would fit through the door behind her, going so far as to suggest she wear a back protector under her shirt. The stunt co-ordinator, however, insisted that the back protector would show up onscreen, and that Dash would be fine without one.

She wasn’t.

The follow pad jammed as the stunt co-ordinator tried to push it through the door, and Dash landed on bare concrete and broke her back.

What happens when there’s a stunt you don’t feel comfortable doing?

While working on Jurassic Park, Dash was asked to do a stunt where a car got stuck in a tree and later fell on top of the character Dash was doubling for. The falling car was made of metal, and was suspended on hydraulics, and would present a real danger were Dash unable to get out of the way in time as the stunt specified. After examining the script, Dash felt uncomfortable with the stunt, and told director Steven Spielberg that she felt it was beyond her capabilities.

“I said ‘I can do all the stunts required, I just don’t feel comfortable doing this.’ So for that week, they replaced me with another stunt person, and then I continued the rest of the movie.”

Did a stunt ever go really wrong?

During a scene for Halloween 4, Dash was doing a high fall off a roof. She was suspended in the air by a cable, and the FX people were meant to cut the cable to release her so she could fall. When the cable was cut, however, it snapped back and hit her in the face. Dash describes the pain as, “like if you got hit with a rock in the face as hard as you can”.

“I had this whip-mark on my face, and it came really really close to my eye, but I’m very very lucky I didn’t lose my eye.

It was very painful, and everyone was like “OMG! We’re sorry, that wasn’t supposed to happen!”

Are there any movies you regret turning down?

Dash answered this one with a “kinda yes, kinda no”. She was offered work on River Wild, starring Meryl Streep, but ended up turning down the role because it involved white water rafting in extremely rough waters.

Once the filming had finished, a friend of Dash’s reported that they stunt team on River Wild had chosen a river to use for the scene, but were a bit worried so decided to send a dummy boat down first.

“They put sandbags in to weigh it down for what it would be for all the actors, and it got sucked under, and I heard it came up 4 or 5 miles up, a week later.”

Is there anything else you’d ask a stunt double given the chance? 

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