SEQUEL STUNTMAN'S
GREECE REVELATION
Copyright 2002 www.tombraiderchronicles.com
[ September 23rd 2002 ]
South
African Jet-ski star Jeremy Phillips has revealed
amusing details on stunt sequences shot while
in Greece speeding across the clear-blue Mediterranean
Sea as Angelina Jolie's body double in Par's Lara
Croft & The Cradle Of Life, All Africa reports
today. The 30-year-old world champion joined Jan
de Bont and his production crew on the sun-drenched
Aegean Sea island of Santorini in August for a
grueling shooting schedule at the northern-most
point of the island in the small costal town of
Ia.
"They
needed someone who could fit the body of Angelina
and perform some really difficult manoeuvres on
a jet ski," recalls Phillips, who escaped injury
when one of the stunt attempts took a nasty turn
for the worse. "They wanted either a barrel roll
or a back flip on a jet ski. The problem was it's
the Mediterranean and there are no waves and you
need waves to do either. So I designed a ramp
to try to copy the shape of a wave but it didn't
work and I ended up crashing the ski. Eventually
we settled for a barrel roll, which you can do
by hitting a boat's wake."
The physiological
aspects of performing as Jolie's stunt and body
double presented Phillips with even more problems.
"She's just a little shorter than me but we pretty
much have the same frame," he said. "I had to
wear a wig and had to shave my body. I wore a
bikini and they added 'chicken fillets' - that's
fake breasts in the movie industry. Thank God
I didn't have to strap 'him' down. I wore a La
Perla bikini that managed to keep it all hidden.
Occasionally it would pop out and we'd have to
stop filming. But I'd just tuck it back in and
we'd continue."
Phillips
scored the Tomb Raider stunt role in May after
catching the eye of producer Shelly Clipard while
performing in the US Pro Freeride Watercraft Tour
held in Los Angeles. The former 1998 and 2000
world champion secured three titles during the
tour. Paramount Pictures second Tomb Raider movie
dramatically opens with a lavish Greek wedding,
interrupted when the infamous volcano of Santorini,
dormant for 10,000 years, spectacularly erupts
and triggers a series of earthquakes which in
turn spawns the rise of a ancient underwater ruin
from the bottom of the sea.
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