Stunt Doubles Who Look Nothing Like The Actors

When a movie character is jumping out of a building, fighting bad guys or driving a sports car way too fast, the audience is probably not looking too closely at their face. And that's just as well because unless it's Tom Cruise, Jackie Chan or Michelle Yeoh, the person doing those stunts is probably not the actor you paid $15 to see. (Yes, this is why there are so many movie scenes that nearly killed Tom Cruise.)

Chances are you won't even notice during the thrill of the chase. And neuroscience is on Hollywood's side too. When we see multiple faces in a short space of time, our brains are programmed to mesh them into one hybrid picture. But in the age of on-set photos and pause buttons, it's much easier to tell when it's the stunt double taking the punches. Especially since some stunt doubles look nothing like the people they're doubling for.

There's an obvious reason for this. Finding stunt professionals who closely match the physique of someone like, say, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is a tall order. (In the Rock's case, the producers of Skyscraper hired his cousin, Tanoai Reed, to double for him.) However, it's still fun to step away from the action and marvel at how totally we've been tricked. Meet the stunt doubles who look nothing like the actors whose dirty work they've been doing.

Chad Stahelski also played a demon in the ultimate stunt show of the '90s: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Fight us over it if you want.) But the person doing the majority of the stunt work on the show was British stuntwoman Sophia Crawford.

Crawford was 11 years older than star Sarah Michelle Gellar. She learned martial arts in Hong Kong while working as an actress, then moved to Hollywood and started doing stunt work. She doubled for Gellar in 1997's Scream 2 and for the first four seasons of Buffy.

For a while, it was a fun job. Crawford even met her future husband Jeff Pruitt on set: he joined the show as stunt coordinator in season two. She says that they made an excellent team, but the same wasn't true for her and Gellar.

Buffy creator Joss Whedon was keen to protect his star, which meant Crawford was the one taking and throwing punches. Crawford has said that Gellar realized it was smart to leave the fighting to the professionals — but there are also rumors that Gellar was jealous of the attention her stunt double received for her impressive moves. Gellar also continually claimed that she did her own stunts, which ultimately pushed Pruitt and Crawford to leave the show after season four. Crawford continued working consistently, performing stunts in shows including Veronica Mars, Angel and Sons of Anarchy.

When you're a hairy-faced dude doubling for one of the most beautiful women in the world, the least you can do is shave. But to be fair to stuntman Diego Guerra, he was probably more focused on his upcoming motorcycle stunt than the state of his facial hair when he stepped in for Penelope Cruz in Zoolander 2.

The practice of using male stuntmen to double for female actors is called "wigging" and it's not popular with female stunt performers. Women are already a minority in the industry and resent watching men don a wig to double for an actress instead of finding a woman to do the job. There are also few people of color working in the stunt industry. In the past, white actors have put on blackface to double for actors of color (known as a "paint down.")

In 2016, veteran stuntwoman Deven MacNair took a stand after a male stunt coordinator chose to double for Kate Bosworth in a driving stunt on The Domestics rather than let her take the wheel. MacNair filed a complaint with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). The production was cautioned but not fined, and MacNair found her stunt work drying up. She now mainly works as a coordinator and with SAG-AFTRA's Diversity in Casting Incentive trying to get more people of color and women into stunts.

Quvenzhané Wallis had one of the most prestigious debuts of any child star. She landed the lead role in 2012's Beasts of the Southern Wild when she was five and couldn't even read the script, and was seven when filming wrapped. Her performance saw her become the youngest actor ever nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, at the age of nine. (She lost out to Jennifer Lawrence.)

But no matter how talented young actors are, they have to abide by rules that limit what they can do. That's why Wallis was spotted with an adult double on the streets of New York while she was filming the 2014 musical Annie.

You might think Annie isn't exactly full of action sequences, but what counts as a stunt is pretty broad when kids are involved. The Screen Actors Guild's (SAG) Young Performers Handbook says that even everyday activities like riding a bike, walking along a high wall, or climbing a fence can count as stunts when it's a minor doing it. Being a passenger in a high-speed chase with a stunt driver is out too.

However, Wallis' doubles didn't get all the fun: she got to fly in a helicopter. She told Young Hollywood that she wasn't bothered by the height but it made her nauseous, so maybe it's just as well she's keeping her feet firmly on the ground and highly supervised.

When a show has a lot of kids who are about the same age and appearance and all facing dystopian peril, their stunt double might be the same person. At 4'10" Emily Brobst has played multiple kids in The Walking Dead. 

She doubled for Chandler Riggs in the pudding scene of season four episode nine — the one that required Carl to sit on a roof. (Possibly the least dangerous moment in the kid's childhood.) She also doubled for fellow zombie-besieged kids played by Luke David Blumm (Linus), Macsen Lintz (Henry), and Elle Graham (Winnie). And she's turned traitor and played a walker.

Although there are many adult actors who refuse to do their own stunts, many want to try them (or at least claim that they do) and some child stars are up for it too. Riggs has said that as he got older, the Walking Dead creators allowed him to do more of Carl's stunts. He told Daily Dead that he usually got a chance to at least try the stunt himself, adding, "It was really fun — and sometimes more painful — to be way more involved."

Away from The Walking Dead, Brobst has played her fair share of kids of various ages getting into trouble. She's doubled for Good Girls' Izzy Stannard, Daisy Tahan in The Nice Guys, and the much-doubled Ty Simpkins as Harley Keener in Iron Man 3.

Hollywood legend Debbie Evans was born in 1958 and she's still performing stunts people half her age would shudder at.

Evans started out as a pro motorcyclist, so she specializes in driving very fast and dangerously. She's in numerous Fast and Furious films, including doubling for Michelle Rodriguez in 2015's Fast and Furious 7. Other actresses she's made look like action stars include Sandra Bullock, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder. She has played one heroine older than herself: in Terminator: Dark Fate she doubled for Linda Hamilton, who is two years Evans' senior.

You've also seen her stunts in classics like '80s series Knight Rider, Spider-Man 2, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, and Bad Boys 2. But her most iconic scene is the motorcycle chase in The Matrix Reloaded, in which Trinity and Neo drive straight into four lanes of oncoming traffic. Evans said that on the fifth attempt, a driver who was supposed to move over for her hadn't cleared the lane and ended up driving into her leg. "We took a little ride in the ambulance," she laughed.

As you'd expect, Evans has been through more injuries than those of us who get our kicks on couches rather than motorcycles, including one that put her in the hospital for 19 days with multiple broken bones. Although she thought about quitting after that, she told Today Extra, "I realized that this is what I was meant to do."