Stuntwomen are the Real-Life Heroes Behind the Scenes of Live Action Thrills
Sarah Lezito
Image created by www.facebook.com/sarahlezito
Stealthily weaving through traffic-packed thoroughfares, leaping 40 feet into the air, performing wheelies and sliding down staircases on a custom-made Harley Davidson LiveWire, the Black Widow, played by A-list actress Scarlett Johansson, was the apex rider on the streets of Seoul. Set to collide with a passing truck, she skillfully slides underneath the vehicle’s belly in the nick of time, and speeds off on the hair-raising twists and turns of the iconic chase scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) that had audiences at the edge of their seats.
Now a touchstone action sequence among fans of the Marvel universe, the live action chase was an outlier in the CGI-driven movie. The caliber of the stunts performed had left some viewers skeptical, unconvinced that human beings could be capable of such feats of daring and skill without digital mediation.
Sarah Lezito is doubling for Scarlett Johansson in Avengers 2 and Black Widow
Image created by www.visordown.com
Yet Sarah Lezito, the French stuntwoman who executed all of the Black Widow’s exhilarating tricks– her stunt debut at 24 years old– has since racked up a slew of awards and acclaimed appearances in international stunt riding competitions, and garnered a total of 17 million followers across Instagram, Facebook and TikTok (as well as 31 million likes on TikTok alone), to prove to all the naysayers that she is the real deal.
At 13 years old, she began performing tricks on an ATV, a popular activity among neighborhood peers at the time. She got her first motorcycle, the Yamaha DTX 125cc, at 16 years old. The rest, as the saying goes, was history, enveloped in a cloud of dust.
Sarah still finds joy in an unremitting routine of daily training, perhaps one of the few things that have remained unchanged from her days practicing tricks in her neighborhood to a career stunning spectators with virtuosic two-wheeled choreography on competition grounds or the set of Hollywood blockbusters."This motorcycle is a lightweight that lets you do anything you feel like,” she says of her G 310 R, her mechanical steed in a late-night car park race. “I love playing with the bike".
A sense of play is an essential counterweight to the exceptional focus required in pushing beyond her physical and mental limits every single day. Sarah says that the trick to continuously elevating her repertoire of moves is to silence the voice of instinct that warns her of the possibility of falling. Achieving the strength, kinesthetic awareness and technical understanding required of her show-stopping stunts pales in difficulty to summoning the mental fortitude to push through setbacks and falls. Not everyone can weather a risky line of work that forces them to confront their fears every single day. Yet Sarah refuses to take her foot off the accelerator. "The bike is easy to trust," she explains. “Concentration is the key. When I ride, only the bike and I exist."
Scarlett Johansson, Hollywood star
Image created by www.indyturk.com
Sarah Lezito
Image created by www.facebook.com/sarahlezito
Sweeping in an array of global accolades along the way, Sarah rose to the top of the industry at a young age: she is the reigning queen of the stunt industry, and has held the title of “best stuntwoman in the world” for many years. Despite this, most articles lauding the epic chase scene in Age of Ultron, if they acknowledge the contribution of the stunt crew at all, hardly mention Sarah Lezito by name. Stunt professionals perform an overlooked yet integral role within the movie-making apparatus, even with the advent of CGI. As Nicole Kim underscores in a Hollywood Reporter article, “I know that stunt pros are artists, actors and athletes all in one. They study, practice and perform just like actors — every stunt person I know is constantly learning. Yet while actors get Oscars, stunt professionals do not”.
There’s a thrill to live action badassery that CGI elides. Stunt professionals like Sarah make the stakes of the action real, and they often risk their lives to do so. Though audiences may be unable to parse the precise composition of a scene in the moment of watching it– particularly with the industry’s growing reliance on post-production effects– there’s an elusive potency that great stunt work adds to a scene that, nonetheless, immediately makes itself felt. That’s why the Seoul chase scene in Age of Ultron is one of the most memorable sequences in a two and a half hour film packed with special effects. Reviewers may ambiguously attribute the frisson produced by high-speed motoring to “movie magic”, but stunt work is the very heart– the pulsing engine– of action.
Add to stuntwork’s marginalized status in Hollywood the fact that the profession has always been heavily dominated by men, and it’s clear that Sarah had her work cut out for her at the beginning of her career. But she’s cleared all obstacles in her way and is now at the top of her game, and eager to get more women interested in the scene. “It’s kind of boring to be the only girl. You know, sometimes I wish I could find a girl who is just really better than me,” Lezito told CNN Sport. Due in large part to Sarah’s prolific presence across her social media platforms, the incredible world of stunt work is reaching audiences all over the world, and a new generation of girls are gearing up to kick start their bikes and create that live action “magic” for themselves.