You may not know Lee Sheward's name, but if you've seen a movie in the last few years, you almost certainly know his work. He is one of Hollywood's top stuntmen and stunt coordinators, having worked on blockbusters like Mission: Impossible, Titanic and The Bourne Supremacy. He's also been a stunt double for stars like Michael Douglas. And to top it off, he's chairman of the Equity Stunt Register, which oversees the training and accreditation of stunt performers and coordinators in the United Kingdom.

Q: How did you get into being a stuntman?
A: I was always pretty active as a kid, and when I was nine I told my mum that's what I wanted to be. Rather than brushing it off, she took the trouble to find out what was involved, and then supported me in doing the things I needed to in order to get there.

Q: What does it take to succeed?
A: Well, I think it's fair to say that stunt performers are born, not made. There's something deep down inside that makes you a successful performer with a career, not just a risk-taking show-off—people like that don't tend to last long. Then it takes a lot of hard work to build up the skills you need. To even get onto the first rung of the ladder, you need to have mastered six sports to instructor level, including one fighting skill. That's a pretty high level—in karate or judo, for instance, it's one level below black belt—and you need to reach it for all six.

Q: Then do you start right in?
A: No way! That's just the entrance qualification. No one gets to perform stunts without being under the direction of an experienced stunt coordinator. To begin with, you'd focus on one discipline—horse riding, for instance. Every time you perform, the coordinator fills out your logbook and you gradually move on to different disciplines and more difficult stunts. After a minimum of three years, when you've done enough work, the committee reviews your record before deciding whether you're ready to move on to the next level of working by yourself for two years and then coordinating after 10.

Q: Who's ultimately responsible for the safety in a stunt?
A: The stunt coordinator sets it up, does the risk assessments, agrees with the director how it's going to be done. But ultimately the performers should decide whether they're happy. I've been on sets where we didn't like how a job was set up, and as specialists we knew what needed to be changed. So we told the coordinator how we were going to do it instead.

Q: How far can you reduce the risk?
A: If you're working with stunt people, you reduce the risk to an acceptable level. If one of the stars insists on being in the stunt, we have to reduce the risk to effectively zero. Run-of-the-mill stunts can actually be more dangerous … on a big one everyone is so focused, but if it's something you've done a hundred times before, that's when your concentration might not be 100 percent. And that's when you can pick up a ‘knock.' You don't look the Grim Reaper in the face every day, but you know half a dozen times a year that if it goes wrong you are going to really, really hurt yourself.

Q: Would you ever ask someone to do a stunt you wouldn't do yourself?
A: I'm always most comfortable as a coordinator when I know that I could step in and do it myself if I needed to. But there are specialist areas that aren't my strength, like freefall parachuting or motorbikes, where it is better to use an expert. I still work with them to agree on the safety of the stunt, but their experience is crucial. I actually worry more about the stunts I'm not doing than the ones I do myself!