The Stunt Squad

With Bollywood heroes taking on daredevil avtars in sync with the current trend of action films,their leading ladies are not far behind. Rai-Bachchan had action scenes in Jodhaa Akbar,Dhoom 2 and Raavan,Priyanka Chopra in Don 2 and Bipasha Basu in Players. Katrina Kaif performed stunts in Ek Tha Tiger while Jacqueline Fernandez and Deepika Padukone are training for Race 2. Yet,stunt doubles come in handy for the more dangerous sequences. “While shooting for Ram Gopal Varma’s Chakravyuh,I performed a scene that required me to jump from the second floor,” says stunt artiste Geeta Tandon,28.

Female stunt artistes remain few in number and largely unnoticed. The reason,explains action director Allan Amin,is that most of them are untrained. “They are relegated to small parts such as running fast or falling down,” he says. The ones to venture into this profession were mostly junior artistes. For instance,Tandon started as a background dancer but taught herself bike and car stunts.

Rukhsar Mehboon Abdul Hakeem used to ride a bike at a Well of Death,till a friend introduced her to action director Darshan Singh’s assistant. Singh was looking for a girl who was both confident and skilled with a two-wheeler. He was tired of dressing his men in wigs and women’s clothing for scenes that had leading ladies performing dangerous action sequences. “It helped that I was fit and had a fair complexion to match that of the heroines,” says Hakeem,36. The stunt artiste chose her career at a time when the industry had only a handful likeher. Over the

years,Hakeem has filled in for Shilpa Shetty in Lal Badshah,Urmila Matondkar in Jungle and recently,Anjana Sukhani in Department.

Action director Ejaz Gulab,president of Movie Stunt Artists Association,insists that not much has changed for stunt artistes over the years. “When filmmakers shoot big-budget action films at international locales,they prefer trained foreign female stunt artistes to add to the scene’s credibility. It does not help that leading ladies want to do their own action scenes these days,” he says. Others,adds Amin,still dress their male staff as women for the scenes.