20 Actors Who Performed Their Own Stunts

Dalton is the only 007 actor to do some of his own stunt work, seen in License to Kill and The Living Daylights. He didn’t do the most extreme maneuvers in these films, but he learned to scuba dive and even did some stunts where he was shot clinging to the side of a Jeep.

As far back as her Alien days, and even as recently as Avatar: The Way of Water, Weaver has done a lot of her own stunts. Like many of her Avatar co-stars, Weaver had to train in free-diving to be able to hold her breath as long as possible to shoot underwater.

Theron isn’t afraid to rough someone up in an action scene or two for films like Atomic Blonde and The Old Guard. She performed a lot of stunt fights on her own. Her stunt double for Atomic Blonde, Monique Ganderton, spoke very highly of Theron’s commitment to shooting great action scenes.

Jolie has performed as many of her stellar onscreen stunts as possible, and is seen here shooting a scene strapped to a car going 30 mph for the 2008 action film Wanted. She has done some stunt work for other performances like her rendition of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, as well as a more recent turn in Taylor Sheridan’s Those Who Wish Me Dead.

Bell has been a working stunt performer and choreographer since the early ’90s, but she stepped in front of the camera for a major role in Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 film Death Proof. Bell has still been working actively in both stunts and acting—she was the stunt coordinator and had a speaking role in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood—and playing the character Scorpion in Malignant.

We could never leave Keanu out of a list like this. From back to his early hit role as Neo in The Matrix to the slick and frenetic “Gun fu” style John Wick series, Reeves is always fun to watch and commits to doing a ton of stunt work himself.

Jason Statham has had some incredible collaborations with director Guy Ritchie (Crank and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), and he reflected in this interview about several of his wildest stunts. One that he referenced involved hanging out of a real helicopter while filming a scene for Crank.

The late ’70s icon had a longtime relationship with stuntman Hal Needham, who worked with him in films like The Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit. However, Reynolds performed several stunts himself through his career, including one scene in Deliverance where his character rides a canoe over a waterfall. Reynolds had to go to the emergency room after hitting his head and cracking his tailbone in this shot.

Margot Robbie committed to more stunts than expected when she took the role of Harley Quinn in several DC movies, including this awesome stunt in Birds of Prey. Robbie trained in boxing and gymnastics to take on the role, but she also shouted out Renae Monkeymaker as the stunt woman who handled Harley Quinn’s wildest flips in Birds of Prey.

While Steven Spielberg and the stunt team didn’t let Ford perform anything “potentially fatal” while filming Raiders of the Lost Ark, one of the most famous stunts in the whole series was performed by Ford himself. That’s right—the scene where Indiana Jones runs from a massive boulder in the introduction is Ford. Spielberg noted that it took about ten takes to capture this moment which forced Ford to outrun the fiberglass ball over and over again.

While Bale didn’t participate in the incredible practical vehicle stunts in The Dark Knight, he did get some martial arts training to make the fights look good. He also told CBS News that it was him, and not a stunt double, who was on the Sears Tower in Chicago for one shot in the film.

For one of her most memorable roles in Kick-Ass, Moretz trained with Jackie Chan’s stunt team to be able to participate in her character Hit-Girl’s fight scenes as much as possible. Moretz has since been unafraid to handle some stunts here and there. She even learned judo for her recent role in The Peripheral, and demonstrated it by tossing Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.

Like Keaton, Lloyd is another pioneering Hollywood comedian known for some thrilling stunts. Lloyd hangs from a clock face in this iconic shot from Safety Last! Luckily that title wasn’t taken to heart in production, as cinematic trickery made this and the preceding climb much more safe.