Monique Ganderton Quotes

I love getting to work with the stunt coordinator. It's like choreography, like a dance.

I punch a lot of guys on set. It's much easier than in real life as your hands don't hurt afterwards. The key is that you miss.

On 'Angel' I got to work a lot with Mike Massa, who was David Boreanaz' stunt double, and Mike would let me do most of my stuff by myself. I did almost all my fight scenes by myself.

There's a lot of directing within the stunt coordinator's job.

While filming 'The Matrix,' we studied how a Chinese fight-choreography team trains actors before production starts so that they can participate in action sequences in a more dynamic way.

There were a number of people who helped me get there, and the one I always mention is Michael Byrne, the great master swordsman and brilliant stunt double.

I can't remember ever being involved in a fight in a movie where I haven't done most of it.

For ages, in my lunch hours, I would just go round and choreograph fight scenes. For fun. So now I'm very good at being thrown around. I bounce, in the words of my friends.

With stunt guys, you can punch them in the face because it's, you know, just part of work. You feel bad about that but not as bad as if you punch another actor.

I did do my own stunts.

Sword fighting in film is not about how good the fighter is, but how good the actor receiving the blows is.

I love doing my own stunts but it's hard.

When you do an action movie, you've got to come prepared to do an action movie.

My son, Tony Vincent, is a stuntman. He doubles for Jim Caviezel on 'Person of Interest.' He works really hard.

I will do anything, and I do almost everything myself. But when there is something extra heinous to do, I have a great stunt double, Eddie Davenport, and a great stunt coordinator, Jeff Wolfe.

The hardest thing is getting fake hit. You really have to sell it. Somebody comes at you and stops a couple inches from your face. You have to react like it's painful. In my training, those were the days I was more sore, doing gut punches or getting thrown against walls. You're moving your body in a way that's not natural.

Jen Murray, my stunt person, is totally comfortable getting thrown into a cabinet and onto the ground or getting hit by a car. I, on the other hand, am not. Nor would it look great on film, so she does it.

Stunts have to be meticulously arranged. Choreographed. You could take a fight scene and set it to music.

I insist on doing all my own film stunts, although they are often worked out in advance by a stunt man who then advises me on the best and safest method of performing it.

I worked as a stuntman on the 'Star Trek' TV series pilot.

In 'The Matrix,' you see the fight between Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishburne. It's an amazing fight. But I know that they've rehearsed it for months beforehand. Because in some of the moves you can see them anticipating blocks before they actually happen.

Fight scenes are hard, no matter what you do. You're trying to make it look like you're hurting someone without hurting them. It doesn't matter how big and strong the guy is that you're fighting or how small and feeble someone is that you're fighting. You don't want to hurt them. You're working with them.

I really enjoy doing stunts, especially. I had never done any stunt work, ever, in my life before, and in our first episode of 'Legacies,' I was doing a bunch.

Having been a stunt girl for so long, a big part of my job, when being a stunt double, was to not just make the other person look as cool as they could, but also to act as support.

Mads [Mikkelsen] and I have a really epic brawl - a week shoot, lots of rehearsal - and he was just delightful. He's a dancer and a gymnast so he knows how to plant the moves. He was always saying, "Are you okay?" When you've got that level of mutual consideration you form a family very quickly.