I realised how much misdirection is in stunt co-coordinating. It's similar to magic, the tricks we use to make people think the stunt is real. I also have a lifelong fascination with gambling cheats. I'm not one, but I do have a fascination with it.

As a close-up magician, I was using gambling cheating techniques.

A good stunt has to have both style and substance. It's a combination of impact and notoriety, the element of danger, technical execution, and the skill of the stunt performer.

If a magician makes a mistake, it's sometimes forgiven by the audience. If a gambling cheat makes a mistake, they will almost certainly lose their lives - and probably in a horrible manner.

My whole life I've actually been training to be a stunt man without realising it. I've always loved extreme sports, and I now I get paid for it.

Yakima Canutt was famously John Wayne's stunt double, and in the Western movie 'Stagecoach,' there is a fantastic scene where there are some horses thundering along, pulling a carriage. He climbs out onto the horses and drops down underneath them, so he's being dragged along, and then he lets go.