In the 2018 film “Venom,” Tom Hardy maneuvers a high-speed motorcycle in a chase through the streets of San Francisco. He then proceeds to allow an alien creature to take over his body and bite the head off a bad guy. Most moviegoers were probably wise to the fact that Hardy wasn’t really serving as the host to a murderous extraterrestrial parasite, but Hardy wasn't really flying through the air on a motorcycle either.

A team of stunt performers, more modernly known as action actors, were responsible for delivering the movie magic and making it look seamless. The term "action actor” is relatively new, but the industry of stunt performance has been around for nearly as long as films have been made.

In “Avengers: Endgame,” when Captain America was forced to go toe-to-toe against a younger version of himself, a crew of stunt performers was there. 
 In “Bullitt,” when Steve McQueen went on his classic car chase through some of the same streets as Hardy, stunt performers were the real people behind the wheel.

Stunt performers were also a vital piece of the silent film industry, memorably in the chariot race scene of the 1926 version of “Ben-Hur.”

However, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) holds the 93rd Academy Awards ceremony next year, not one of the more than 3,000 stuntmen and stuntwomen responsible for constructing the awe-inspiring visuals and performing the death-defying stunts will be found anywhere near the stage.

In fact, there is a chance that a large number of them could be found directly outside the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard with signs held in their arms and chants hanging in the air above their heads. Jack Gill, one of modern cinema’s most successful stunt coordinators, would be at the front of the crowd. He’d be disappointed to be there, but nonetheless enthusiastic about his cause.

“A protest takes away everybody’s special night and I don't really want that to happen,” Gill said. “But if the Academy is going to turn a blind eye on us, it's the only thing left to do.”

If the protest happens, it won't be for lack of trying other routes. For the last 28 years, Gill has led the charge to add an “action category” to the Oscars, navigating an organization long noted for its resistance to change.

Every year, Gill asks to attend the Academy’s annual planning meeting for the awards show, in order to present why he believes the award is warranted.

"They absolutely will not let anybody come in and make a speech about why we should have a category so that just leads you to believe that they don't want us to be there,” Gill said.

Other technical categories like “Best Production Design” and “Best Visual Effects” have maintained yearly awards since the 1920s and 1930s. Perhaps most shocking is that a separate ceremony for three other technical categories are held weeks before the broadcast show, but the Academy refuses to include a stunts category in this satellite ceremony as well.

Despite the lack of movement for a stunts award, other changes have occurred at the Academy during the last three decades. Since starting his campaign, Gill has watched two other categories (“Best Original Musical or Comedy Score” and “Best Popular Film”) come and go with little fanfare.

In 2013, the addition of a branch for casting directors was seen by many as a potential prelude to the addition of an award in that category, though that has yet to materialize.

In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Academy announced some of its biggest changes in years. In addition to allowing films without theatrical releases to be considered for awards in the following year, the award for Sound Mixing and the award for Sound Editing would be merged into a single award called "Best Sound." The latter change was made at the request of the Sound Branch itself.

Stunt people don’t even have a branch in the Academy yet. Gill and every other stunt person in the Academy are officially designated as “members-at-large," rather than part of an industry-specific group, despite the fact that stunt people make up a significant portion of the catch-all branch. In 2019, the Academy invited 49 new members-at-large; 21 of them were stunt people.

“The Academy told me about four years ago that if I could get up in the 90-member bracket then they would start taking [a new branch] seriously,” Gill said. 

That number now stands at 95. With a growing number of like-minded colleagues in the Academy, Gill files a petition every year to form a stunt people branch in order to add a category.

Despite the progress, the response from the Academy’s board of governors has been the same: Smiles and silence.

“Each and every year that goes by that we don't have an Oscar category, it's another year that some deserving person is not going to stand up there and win an award for something they put their life’s work into,” Gill said.

He has become convinced that public awareness is the most important piece of accomplishing their goal.

"I think the Academy is too encompassed in what makes an ideal ‘Academy movie’ and action is nowhere in there,” Gill said. "The public wants a category for something that everybody watches. The public wants to see action.”

After the 92nd Academy Award nominations were announced, Gill set his sights on getting the biggest audience yet to know about his goal.
 The stunt world got a close-up at the Oscars in 2020 with the help of the Academy award-winning film “Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood.” As played by Brad Pitt in his Oscar-winning role, stuntman Cliff Booth offered the public its biggest window yet into a world that is adjacent to, but decidedly less glamorous than most movie stars, even fading ones like Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton.

“I think it’s time we give a little love to our stunt coordinators and our stunt crews,” Pitt said, acknowledging their contributions in his acceptance speech at Gill’s request.

However, struggles in recognizing the contributions of the stunt industry are not specific to the Academy Awards in the United States. A similar campaign is being waged in the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

Jim Dowdall is just one of the many stunt people who have been calling on the British Academy to add a category to their awards show. Dowdall is a stunt coordinator and the president of the British Stunt Register, the largest association of stunt professionals working in film and television. Dowdall’s early jobs included uncredited stunts in the 1967 film “The Dirty Dozen,” plus an appearance as a stormtrooper in the first two “Star Wars” movies.

In 2014, he wrote an open letter to the chairman of the BAFTA Film Committee.

“Most of us in the stunt community have felt more than aggrieved that… neither BAFTA nor the US Academy appears to have mentioned stunt coordinators or performers in their recognition line-up (apart from the occasional obit),” Dowdall wrote.

Years of requests and no movement resulted in a picket-line protest from stunt people during the 73rd British Academy Film Awards, another show where Brad Pitt won an award for his role in “Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood.”  

Despite the long-running difficulties for recognition at both the American and British film academies, there have been a handful of victories.

Four honorary awards have been given by the Academy’s Board of Governors to stuntmen (three of which occurred since Jack Gill started his campaign).

Other organizations have recognized stunt contributions for many years. In fact, the stunt community has had its own set of awards for nearly two decades. In 2001, Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz created “Taurus World Stunt Awards,” a show that recognizes a variety of accomplishments within the world of stunt work.

Additionally, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presents two awards (one for comedy and one for drama) for stunt coordination every year at the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. Similarly, the Screen Actors Guild has given out two awards (one for film and one for television) for "Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble” every year since 2008.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

JUMPING OFF BUILDINGS FOR A LIVING: THE LIFE OF A STUNTMAN

There's often more to stunt work than just jumping off buildings or taking a fake punch to the face.

What exactly does the career of a stunt actor look like? The answer to this question largely depends on where and when a stunt actor is working.

The beginnings of Jack Gill's career in the stunt industry tell the story best. He described it as “a complete fluke.”

Originally a motorcycle racer, Gill found the stunt world when a complete stranger asked him if he could jump a motorcycle over six burning cars. The curious query turned out to be a job offer from Hal Needham.

To Gill’s luck, Needham was not just a moderately successful stuntman. He was Burt Reynolds’s stunt double who would later become the most famous stuntman ever in the business.

In fact, Needham was the man that Brad Pitt’s character in “Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood” was loosely based on. He was also the last stuntman to win an Academy Honorary Award.

Gill completed the requested jump and Needham quietly took Gill under his wing, offering his mentorship where he could. However, this mentorship came with a reservation.

"You can’t go around telling everybody that you know me,” Needham told Gill. “But you can call me up when you need to know things and ask me questions about the business.”

“I liked the fact that he didn’t just parade me in front of everybody and say, ‘This is my guy,’” Gill said. “He made me fend for it myself.”

Gill credits Needham’s hands-off mentorship for his ability to work in such varied settings of the stunt industry. In his more than 40 years in the business, Gill has jumped off buildings and cliffs away from explosions, flown an F-16 fighter jet, and crashed more cars on purpose than he can count.

Gill’s films include “Venom” and multiple “Fast and Furious” movies, and cumulatively they have earned more than $4 billion at the box office, making him the 12th highest-grossing stunt coordinator in the world. Additionally, Gill’s introduction to the business inspired a family tradition of sorts. His brother, Andy, joined the business shortly after he did and is currently the highest-grossing stunt coordinator at just over $11 billion. Andy has worked on some of Marvel’s biggest films, like “Black Panther” and “Captain America: Civil War.”

As action films continue to top the charts at the box office year in and year out, stunt coordinators with talent like the Gill brothers are in high demand. However, it’s not only because they can make action sequences look as cool as they do; it’s also because of how important it is to have skilled people organizing the controlled chaos.

Even when every possible precaution is taken, there are no assurances that something won’t go wrong. It has happened plenty of times before.

Though no conclusive evidence has ever surfaced, rumors have swirled for decades about stunt people killed on the sets of both the 1925 and 1959 versions of “Ben-Hur.”

Just last year, “Fast and Furious 9” stuntman Joe Watts was placed in a medically induced coma after suffering a serious head injury from a fall. Though he eventually recovered, this incident came only a week after special effects coordinator Warren Appleby was killed on the set of the DC Universe television series “Titans” during a stunt rehearsal.

In addition to the very real human cost of accidents on a set, productions like these also face major financial costs when things go awry. Tom Cruise, an actor who famously performs a lot of his own stunt work, broke his ankle on the set of “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” forcing production to pause for eight weeks and costing the studio a total of $80 million.

Though stunt people say questions of safety have been taken more seriously as their public visibility has risen, there is no doubt that the possibility for disaster always lurks around the corner.

Jeff Wolfe has worked in the business for more than 25 years as an actor, stuntman, stunt coordinator, and director. He is also the vice president of the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures. Wolfe acknowledges that the need to make things look good always has to be balanced with the importance of making sure everyone is OK after the camera stops rolling.

“From the moment I get a script, I get these whole grandiose ideas of what I’d like to see,” Wolfe said. “But then I also have to temper that equally with safety and how it’s going to work.”

Having been injured himself on film sets before, Wolfe maintains that safety is always the number one concern for any stunt coordinator.

“The most important word for a stunt coordinator is NO,” he said.

The men and women performing the stunts that make Hollywood movies so magical are well aware of the risks involved. They jump off buildings and crash planes for a greater cause. Danger is part of the job. They’d just like the Academy to acknowledge their hard work in some fashion.