STUNTS OF A LIFETIME
This year’s winner of the coveted Equity Lifetime Achievement Award has not only had a stellar career as a stunt performer and coordinator but has also given generously of his time and talent as a mentor to young ‘stunties’ and decades of involvement in helping to formulate safe practices in the industry.
When nominations opened for the 2023 Equity Lifetime Achievement Award presented by Media Super, one name came up time and time again — Chris Anderson.
“This man has done more for the stunt industry than any other in the 21 years I have been an MEAA member. He is one of the main reasons I am where I am in my career.”
“Chris gave me my first day on set after I was graded as a stunt performer and I’m certain he has done the same for countless other stunties over the years.”
“He has no ego, offering to assist film students just as much as international producers.”
“He has taken hundreds of stunties under his wing and given them opportunities to train, work and flourish, with so many continually thanking him for giving them a chance when no one else would, or believing in them when they couldn’t believe in themselves.”
“It’s no secret that Chris is regarded as one of the best stunt performers and coordinators this country has ever produced. The fact he has achieved much of this with only one leg for a great deal of his career attests to his commitment, determination, strength and skills.”
These are just some of the countless peer nominations that poured in for Chris, who is one of Australia’s most experienced stunt performers and stunt coordinators. In March, the MEAA National Performers Committee voted him this year’s winner of the prestigious Equity Lifetime Achievement Award.
Over the last 40 years, Chris has contributed his talent and expertise to more than 100 screen productions, while mentoring and training countless stunt performers through all stages of their careers and playing a pivotal role in the creation of the Australian industry’s rigorous safety practices and procedures.
Among those who nominated Chris for the award were his wife Anne and children Adam and Cassidy Anderson: “Since the early ’80s through to 2010, in addition to his own professional pursuits, he hosted weekly Saturday morning training sessions without any financial gain. All costs were borne by Chris, as well as the investment of his Saturdays for over 30 years. Though it meant our time in his presence was extremely limited, as his family, we are deeply proud of the legacy he leaves and the glistening careers for which he has helped paved the way.”
Chris was presented with the award at a ceremony at the Sydney Theatre Company in May in front of more 200 industry members. Among those who paid tribute to him on the night was actor and director Rachel Griffiths. “The worlds we create would not be possible without the skill and talent of so many people. One of those people is Chris Anderson,” she said.
“When I directed Ride Like a Girl, he came in to do 10 days and stayed for 11 weeks. I had worked with Chris before and knew he was the best in the business, but I could not have been more fortunate to have him as the stunt coordinator on our film. Executing our racing scenes safely was overwhelming in its risk. This was the heart of our story. It had to look as dangerous as we know it is, but we could not afford, morally or commercially, to fail in executing the sequences safely. No one can disagree that he delivered this in ways we had never seen on screen before.”
Another who paid tribute at the awards night was stunt coordinator/performer Philli Anderson, who has worked with Chris, and been mentored by him, for a decade. “I reckon that over 50 per cent of the stunt coordinators Australia has produced have been personally mentored by this man… and the majority of the rest of them call him when they need something,” she said. “Chris is the master of thinking outside the box to create ways to safety execute stunt work. Hey, under Chris I doubled Michelle Payne in Ride Like a Girl — and I don’t ride a horse!”
The coordinator is the head of the stunt department and works closely with the director to design and implement the action elements of the story. In Australia, both performers and coordinators must pass MEAA’s extensive Stunt Grading process to work in the screen industry. Chris is among those who helped create and formalise the process in the 1980s and has updated it many times over the years through his involvement on the Equity Stunt Committee and National Grading Committee for almost the entirety of his career.
“We are one of the most regulated countries in the world, when it comes to stunts, and that’s a good thing,” Chris says. “We looked at a lot of systems worldwide before we came up with ours. Some people here say that we don’t need to be as regulated as we are but since we brought this grading procedure in, there have been very few accidents — you can count them on one hand. And we’ve recently updated the procedure again, so it’s on about version 10. Just to make sure everybody we grade has a good chance of getting home every night.”
When asked for a favourite production, Chris says he has too many too mention, but recently ABC’s Savage River, directed by Jocelyn Moorehouse, was standout: “I have loved working with Jocelyn since we did Proof together back in 1991 and The Dressmaker in 2014. Savage River was an exciting job with plenty of different stunts involving cars, water and fights. The cast were fantastic to work with and we all had a great time putting all the different pieces together. ” Chris’s hundreds of other credits include King Kong, Click Bait, Mad Max, Hotel Mumbai, Mortal Kombat and God’s Favourite Idiot.
In 1991, while working on a feature film called Winds Chris was involved in a boating accident, which resulted in his right leg being amputated. “It was a pretty horrific accident and one that nobody could foresee,” he says. Rather than causing him to leave the industry he loves, Chris says the accident gave him a new humility that he credits with improving his skills as a stunt coordinator.
“I was one of the top stunt guys in the country at the time and, as a coordinator, it was really hard because I knew what the others could do and that I could do it better than a lot of them. When I lost my leg, it alleviated that problem — I then knew I couldn’t do it better than them. So I didn’t try. It opened up a whole new area of coordinating for me. It was just like, okay, trust these guys and let them do their job”
Chris credits the tight-knit stunt and screen community for helping him find his new place in the industry after his accident. “Luckily, the Australian film industry got behind me and they were so good, they really helped me get back to work. I had producers who would hire me on a job, and if I wasn’t ready, they’d have another coordinator sitting in the background. It didn’t happen very often, but it did happen, because I had to ease my way back in. Still, it was only six months. And Glenn Boswell, one of the great stunt coordinators here in Australia, hired me as a strike clone on a film called Fortress and blew my leg off, rolled down a hill. So it was a perfect reintroduction to being a stuntman and being able to utilise, you know, a new part of me that I didn’t have.”
As a longstanding peer support volunteer and advocate for the Limbs 4 Life charity Chris helps others navigate the amputation process. “It is easy to forget that he does such a physically demanding job as an amputee,” Philli says. “Behind the driver’s seat in his car you can find an array of interchangeable legs, so that he can jump in the water, slide a car or spend a 15-hour work day in the sand. Never once in the 13 years of working together have I ever heard Chris say, ‘I can’t do that’. His motto is that you have to have fun every day at work and, for the most part, this is what he sticks to.”
“I’m blessed to be in this industry because it’s a job that I’ve loved since I was 17. And 50 years down the track, I’m still in love with it,” Chris says. “There are so many things that make it, to me, the best industry in the world. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
The Equity Lifetime Achievement Award is proudly presented by Media Super.
Lizzie Franks is editor of The Equity Magazine.
