Stunt Actor. If your first memory of watching TV happens to involve a big box of animal crackers, an older brother screaming at you to be quiet, and a salty-haired Lee Majors playing the rugged, steely-eyed stuntman on The Fall Guy, then you are probably me. And, hey, congratulations—things could be worse for you I think. Frankly, though, you and me could be a little more current; let’s catch ourself up.

“I had a harness so I was safetyed to the car, but there was no CGI and no stunt double,” says Zoe Bell, who is a highly successful stunt actor in Hollywood, and one of the most awesome people ever: poised, brazen, and willing to try anything.

In Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, Bell both acts and stunt-acts—the first time she’d done both in a major role. Watching the film, it’s strictly impressive how long and dexterously she rides on the hood of that car—and, listening to her description of it, the experience sounds pretty unique.

“To be honest, I’d never ridden on the bonnet of a car before… The chase sequence sort of became what it was as we were shooting it… There were moments when Tracie was driving and I was on the bonnet and you could shoot it so there were two faces. You don’t have to shoot around my face seeing some woman. So suddenly you could put the camera wherever it looked best for the shot, as opposed to fighting around me as a double.”

It’s great to get Bell’s perspective on it, because, as you know if you’ve ever seen the film, that sequence is utterly scintillating, and to know it was fun for her confirms what you were hoping to hear.

“It was a really fortunate first time,” she says. “I mean, the girls that surrounded me like Tracie, Mary, Rosario, and Quentin of course made it all an experience that’s not someone’s normal first experience… I enjoyed being on both sides of the character and merging the two. I could set stuff up the way that’s best for me to do the action, which sounds like most people think like that, but I could set it up which way would make things look best. It was nice to have ownership of the whole thing.”

Bell’s experience of getting to do all the stunts for a film in which she also acted is pretty clearly the exception rather than rule, for her or any other Hollywood stunt actors. But we’ve already held up Boba Fett as the ultimate personification of the bounty hunter, and while Zoe Bell does not have a cool helmet, she is a fiesty, beautiful woman in a man’s trade. It all evens out.

Boba Fett or Zoe Bell? Bounty Hunter or Stunt Actor? What’s worse.