Stunt persons are the people who stand in for an actor or actress in a movie when the script calls for a scene that is fraught with physical danger.Movies are all about living out our fantasies and, speaking for most of us, watching a great action film is usually sufficient to fulfill our need for living on the edge.
However, to push us to that edge, movies have to be as realistic as possible and that requires things like James Bond crashing into a bridge while clinging to a rope dangling from a blimp in flight, or Jason Bourne (in The Bourne Ultimatum) escaping his perusers by driving the car he has just stolen, off the top of a multi-story parking garage.
Unlike a book, where a good writer can create the scene in our minds, movies require that we actually see, or believe we see, the dangerous incident happening.
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Professional Stunt persons serve two purposes in movies. First, the lead or star actor or actress in a movie are critical to the success or failure of a production. Lose any of the main characters and production comes to a halt causing the investors to lose everything they had invested. Producers attempt to limit losses by purchasing multi-million dollar insurance policies on the stars and others critical to the success of the production.
However, investors invest in movies to make a profit, not simply break even with a check from the insurance company while insurance companies, for their part, hate to lose money by paying out on a claim. As a result, not only do the insurance companies insist that the lead actors not be exposed to unnecessary danger but investors also have a strong interest in keeping the stars safe.
Second, even with simple, low risk stunts, such as fencing or sky diving, it is often faster and cheaper to hire a stunt double for this rather than investing the time and money in training the lead actor to do this well. The leads in films are hired for their well developed acting talents but that doesn't mean that they are equally talented in every skill the script requires.
