The Daily Populous Monday January 20th, 2025 morning edition
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Realisticus on January 19th, 2025 at 15:32 UTC »

Sad story

EvansHomeforBoys on January 19th, 2025 at 15:48 UTC »

Saw the documentary on HBO I think. Really upsetting. They’d gotten the preparations for the stunt right (speed and power and such) but he wanted to try one more time with some slight adjustments and they proved to be too much. I was very impressed by his resilience and positivity even though he is paralysed from the neck down and can’t function without help.

helenemayer on January 19th, 2025 at 21:12 UTC »

I read Tom Felton's (the guy who played Draco Malfoy) Beyond the Wand recently, here's his account of it -

"Stunt work is cool, right? Well, yes and no.

The vast bulk of the stunt work was done not by us but by the stunt team. I have nothing but respect for those men and women who push themselves to extremes in the name of film-making, simply so that an audience can be entertained. Pretty much every time you see somebody falling from a broom, or jumping, or being bashed about, you can be almost certain it's one of the stunt team rather than us.

I might have felt like the big guy during the duelling scene, but in fact the stunt artists took the brunt of that by far. They seemed to spend a lot of time - especially during Chamber of Secrets - working with a piece of equipment called a Russian swing. Imagine an ordinary playground swing but larger and with metal bars instead of ropes. The stunt performer stands on the platform and it swings back and forth, back and forth until its arc is as long as can be. Then, at the peak of the arc, the performer jumps high into the air and falls onto a crash mat. It looked fun, but it was definitely a job for the pros. And the pro that I had the most involvement with was the incredible David Holmes - or Holmesy to us.

Holmesy was Daniel's stunt double from the beginning and also mine from the second film onwards. Given the various escapades of Harry and Draco, it meant he was kept busy. He routinely used to do stunts dressed as Harry in the morning, go off for lunch and come back to do stunts dressed as Draco in the afternoon. He was an Olympic-standard gymnast from a very early age, and in any shot where you see Daniel or me apparently doing something dangerous, you can be fairly sure it was actually Holmesy. And during the filming of Deathly Hallows it was brought home to us all that stunt work is not an activity to be approached naively.

Stunt artists do everything they can to minimise the risk of their job. But they can't eliminate it completely - there's no totally safe way of falling from a great height, or being hit by a car - and it is impossible to legislate for an unexpected turn of events. Which is exactly what happened when we were filming Deathly Hallows. Holmesy and the rest of the team were rehearsing with a stunt that involved him flying through the air and hitting a wall, wearing a harness and suspended by a high-strength wire. Something went wrong. The wire yanked him back and Holmesy hit the wall far harder than he should have, before falling to a crash mat below. He knew immediately that something was wrong. Paramedics rushed him to hospital, where he learned he was paralysed from the waist down, with very limited use of his arms, and would be that way for the rest of his life.

Naturally, everyone involved was distraught. Imagine going from being able to do a backflip on the spot, to lying in a hospital bed being told you'll never walk again. Sure, it's a risk that stunt performers take every day at work but the reality, when it happens, must be earth-shattering. A lesser man than Holmesy might let it faze him and obviously he now lives a very difficult life. But he is the bravest, most strong-willed person I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. He has the heart of a lion and remains one of my closest, dearest friends.

When he was in hospital, the studio brought him food, much to the envy of the other patients on his ward. So Holmesy insisted that the studio should cook for everyone on the ward - either everyone should have it or no one should. That was Holmesy through and through. Despite his challenges, he continues to bring us so much joy, and his determination to live as normal and active a life as possible is a true inspiration. He tirelessly raises money for the hospital that saved his life, and he has his own production company. He is a constant reminder to me that stunt artists on film sets deserve a great deal more credit that they receive. The actors might get all the adulation, but so often it's the stunt artists that make us look good, and Holmesy is the best of them. He's a beacon of light.

In Holmesy's honour, we now have an annual Slytherin vs Gryffindor cricket match to raise money for the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, where he was treated in the days following the incident. Radcliffe and I are team captains, and the old Hogwarts grudges have by no means been diminished by the years. I really don't have to tell you which house is in the lead, do I?"