Professional Profile: Vic Armstrong, Director,
Action Unit Director, Stunt Coordinator
"I realized I wanted to be a stuntman when I was eight or nine years
old," says Vic Armstrong. "My dad was training racehorses for a very,
very famous actor called Richard Todd, who was the highest paid actor of
his era in the '50s." Todd played the title roles in The Story of Robin Hood
and His Merrie Men and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue, and starred in clas-
sics like Dorian Gray, The Longest Day, and The Virgin Queen. "Every
weekend he'd come down with women covered in furs and jewels, in top
cars, and smelling of aftershave. I thought, `Wow, what an elegant gentle-
man.' He'd tell us stories about films he'd just been to or had been
working on. We'd see pictures of him at premieres."
Armstrong frequented the cinema to take in Todd's latest film, usually
an action adventure. "I'd come home and get my pony out, and charge
along and throw myself off. It drove my dad mad. He believed you
should never get off a horse unless it threw you off."
At age 14, Armstrong's main ambition was to race as a steeplechase
jockey. Too tall to ride professionally, he competed as an amateur for
many years, even riding some of Richard Todd's racehorses. In his late
teens, he met a stuntman who wanted to borrow a horse for a film. The
next day, Armstrong was asked to ride it. He made his film debut as
Gregory Peck's stunt double in Arabesque, parlaying that experience into
doubling for the actor in three more films.
Armstrong was the only young stuntman working in England at the
time. "All the others were ex-commandos from the war or what have
you; middle-age people. I built up a huge portfolio of work very, very
quickly." Vain, mature actors sometimes chose the much younger
Armstrong as their stunt double over an older stuntman.
In 1966, just a year into his career as a stuntman, Armstrong got the
opportunity that would impact his career for the next 35 years: he was hired
to work on the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice. "I was on a picture
in Switzerland with [Gregory] Peck. Bad weather forced them to cancel the
movie." He returned to England and telephoned to chat with a friend--the
stuntman whom he had beaten out for the role in the Peck film. Unable to
accept work on the Bond picture because he was already signed on to 2001:
A Space Odyssey, the friend suggested that Armstrong call and get the spot.
"I met with Bob Simmons, Dickey Graydon, and George Leach, who is now
my father-in-law, and got the job. It was awe-inspiring: this huge set, this
massive film. It was all mind-blowing for a young stuntman."
More Bond films followed: On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Live and Let
Die, Never Say Never Again, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Armstrong's latest
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