Sebastian Stan has been in seven Marvel films and the Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Bucky Barnes. That makes him very experienced working with stunt teams given all the action-packed sequences throughout the franchise. Unfortunately, stunt works remain overlooked among the Hollywood community, including with the Academy’s decision to leave out a stunt category in its yearly celebration of movies. With another Oscars on the way and Stan’s latest action movie The 355 out, the actor is sharing some inside knowledge on his stunt collaborations.
The Marvel actor spoke to CinemaBlend for The 355, which has Sebastian Stan playing Nick Fowler, a CIA officer in the action flick about a group of female spies pitched by Jessica Chastain. Stan shared that he hopes organizations like the Academy will begin to recognize stunt performers, along with saying this:
I really do admire stunt performers and stunt actors and I think they are very undervalued. To some extent, they are always risking something and I just don’t think it’s easy and the weird part is what people don’t see is they’ll see a final product, which is an edited version of it but they won’t necessarily connect where the stunt man came in to make that look pretty and awesome. What you don’t see is when you’re on set and you see them do that stunt like ten times in a row.
A stunt performer’s job is to make an actor like Sebastian Stan look like they can jump off a building in a seamless way as to create an illusion they are even there. And unfortunately with that comes a lack of glory perhaps in being one. Sebastian Stan continued to share his experience with these words:
There are many times I’ve been on a movie or TV show where they changed what they were going to shoot on them in the moment and turn to a stunt person and they go ‘by the way, do they care if instead of doing what we just rehearsed, you just do this instead,’ meaning like you throw yourself in front of a car, ‘I know it’s new, we’re just realizing because of the light and things’ and then they’re like ‘yeah, of course, let’s do it.’ And then they’ll change costume in five minutes and then just do the thing in front of you. Like, what do you do with that?
Stunt actors are quite literally jumping in front of cars and risking their lives to make movies look cool, and yet there’s not enough recognition for them today. Stan shared that what we don’t see is how at the drop of a hat they are often asked to do something risky and they go for it. We often give recognition to high-profile actors like Tom Cruise, who attempt big stunts, but an actual pat on the back to the people who are making it happen much of the time are not getting the attention they deserve.
The 355 is a spy movie about a group of international spies played by Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, Diane Kruger and Lupita Nyong’o who work together to stop a terrorist organization from starting World War III. The movie was filmed in Paris, Morocco and London and co-written/directed by Dark Phoenix’s Simon Kinberg. The 355 is playing in theaters now. Check out what other upcoming 2022 movies are on the way here on CinemaBlend.
