I was injured at the end of 'Kill Bill.' I hit the ground, instead of hitting the mat, pretty hard and busted my ribs and had to have surgery. I was being blown out of a trailer in a harness and actually landed on my coordinator instead - who broke my fall a little! My arm smacked into the ground and obliterated one of the ligaments.
Zoe Bell
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.
Gore, like blood and guts and stuff, I am fine. Suspense, I get super sensitive. I can't handle it.
It's not easy, acting.
I mean, being a stuntwoman never occurred to me until I gave up gymnastics and started doing martial arts and met people that were stunt people. I was like, 'What? Wait. You get to fight and flip and get paid?' I was like, 'Mum, dad, check this out - I could do this stuff and get paid instead of having you guys pay for me to do it.'
I had done maybe three lines of dialogue, ever, before doing 'Death Proof.'
You've just got to know yourself, and know what you're worth, and know where you're going, and know that you can always, always learn more.
I'm still nervous every time I act. I'm not when I'm doing stunts.
I would love to do a comedy, and I think physical comedy is something I probably have a knack on.
It's not until after you've been hit by a car and landed all right that the fear kicks in.
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.
I definitely don't feel like I'm watching ballet during 'Raze.'
What I've had to learn is that I'm also fragile.
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.
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.
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.
I grew up on an island without TV.
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.
If you can fight in high heels, you can walk in high heels.
I never was fanatical about films when I was younger.
Well, I did two lines on a TV show called 'Cleopatra 2525' really badly with an American accent; it was terrible!
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.'
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.
Yes, generally speaking, I get to do my own stunts.
I'm basically klutzy.
I'm not invincible.
It turns out I do okay just playing an angry self-righteous woman.
Neverending Story' was one movie I did see when I was a kid. On the little island I grew up on, they put up a sheet in the town hall.
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.
When I was on 'Xena,' I remember the sound guy and the director at some point being like, you have to make sounds when you fight, and I was like, what are you talking about? You're never going to use it. But they hounded me for a good couple of hours, and basically it was, you need to act, you can't just perform the moves.
If you're going to fight Tom Cruise, you really don't want to make that man bleed.
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.
I stepped away from stunts and into acting right around when stunt people started getting put into motion-capture stuff.
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.
My becoming an actor was a massive shift for me, and a terrifying one.
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?'
I don't surround myself with a lower quality of human.
As a stuntwoman, I never wanted anyone to ever feel afraid for me. I didn't want anyone to ever feel sorry for me.
I would say movies all have their own world or reality they're built in.
Don't be afraid girls. Power's awesome!
This may sound conceited, but the more predominant the role, the more comfortable I am on set.
I think I have a pretty decent business savvy, when I give myself room to.
When you're falling through space time has no meaning.
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?'
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.
It's always scarier saying 'No.' As an actress, I can say 'Yes' to more. But sometimes, as a stunt-woman, I have to say 'No.'
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.
It never occurred to me that I'm intimidating.
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.
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.
