A working life of pain

What does it take to forge a career leaping off tall buildings? Just a healthy fear and a childlike sense of fun, Dean Forster tells Leo Benedictus...

Dean Forster gets asked about his job so often that he has learned a routine. "It's usually five questions," he says, casually self-assured in wraparound shades as we sip coffee together in Henley-on-Thames. "Have you met anybody famous? Have you been hurt? Is the money good? How did you get into it? And ..." He falters for a moment as a cold wind whips around our faces. "... something else."

So how does he deal with it? "For years I used to shrug quite a lot and say, 'Oh, I'm embarrassed.' Then I realised that's what the job entails, and now I love it. Absolutely love it." He does not have to convince me. His pleasure at the prospect of talking about his job is unmistakable - even if some of that early bashfulness still lingers at the edges of his schoolboy smile.

The answers to the five - sorry, four - routine questions are quick to arrive. Yes, he has worked with several famous people (including Gary Oldman and Tom Cruise). His injuries, though minor, have been numerous too. "Just as a chef's going to burn himself," he shrugs, "we get battered and bruised." And at anything up to several thousand pounds a day, the money is indeed good. But if injuries or anything else prevent him from working, he is keen to point out, his income falls to zero. As for how he got into doing stunts for a living, well, he was never really into anything else.

"My family used to own a motorcycle display team called the Mohicans," he explains. "In the 60s, my uncles used to dress up as Red Indians on BSA Gold Star motorbikes and do jumps at fetes and carnivals. As soon as I could walk, they put me on a bike to do little jumps. And it progressed into other areas." From judo and gymnastics to bicycles and trampolines, if it was fast, physical or involved generally throwing yourself about, then the teenage Forster was obsessed with it.

How to make a living from his passions, however, was the thing that gave him more trouble. At first, the closest he could get was working as a lifeguard in his local sports centre, and yet he knew that this was not enough. "I sat down one day and thought, what do I really, really want to do?" he remembers. "And that was it: I really, really wanted to be a stunt performer. And from that day, that's it, that's been my whole adult life - all I wanted to do."

Which is a good thing. Without such single-minded dedication to his work, Forster probably would not have made it. There are no training courses available in the UK for aspiring stunt performers, so in order to build up his skills he had to find work. And yet he would not be able to work without joining the register of the Joint Industry Stunt Committee, which meant producing six separate sporting qualifications at national or county level and finding at least 60 days' employment as an extra in order to gain experience in front of a camera. Even then, once he was registered as a probationary stunt performer, for three years he could only work under the supervision of a coordinator.

"And having those qualifications allows you to go on the stunt register," he cautions. "But it doesn't make you a good stunt performer." For this he had to practise individual skills, on his own or with colleagues, on the job or in his spare time, while trying to impress enough people to build up contacts in the film industry. Even now he is a fully qualified stunt coordinator, the learning continues. "I can call [a rental company] and ask them for an airbag, build a tower, and then spend a day practising high falls," he suggests, by way of example. It sounds expensive. "Yes," he agrees. "But doing the high falls is good money." This is the usual equation for stunt performers, of course: the more dangerous the stunt, the more they get paid. And they get the same again each time they do it.

So how much, I wonder tentatively as we move inside to a more sheltered table, does one actually have to learn about jumping off a building on to a giant airbag? "The higher you go, the smaller that thing gets," says Forster. "You're standing there on the edge ready to jump, and your whole body and mind are going, 'Don't do this. You do this and you're going to die.' When you're looking down like that, then it does become really, really difficult. And it's never as simple as you think. [In my last high fall] there was computer animation above me, and it was going to hit me so I fly backwards. And they wanted me twisting through the air."

What stunt is he best at then? "Fire. Absolutely 100%." He picks up his phone, taps a few buttons, and holds up a picture of a man with a large gun who is wearing a bomber jacket that is engulfed in flames - a lot of flames. "That's me," he announces, bringing the image further forward for me to see. "That's my favourite." It is hard to imagine that his wife likes it much.

In fact, this immolation masterpiece was not even part of a film, he explains, but was taken by a stunt coordinator friend of his for publicity purposes. "It was the first time I'd done it," he says. "There's a lot of science involved. And you do get burned. I know a few people who've got some really bad burns. Touch wood, I haven't." He reaches out for the table top. "When I hit the deck, they said the flames were 15 feet above my head." He is wriggling in his seat with excitement. "We're still kids," he admits. "I think 90% of stuntmen are still children at heart."

But fun aside, surely he is just a little afraid when somebody is about to set him on fire? "There has to be fear, otherwise you become complacent," he says, "and if you become complacent you'll get hurt... You're not nervous the first time, because it's something different. The second time you do it, that's when you're scared, because you really know what to expect... It's not everybody's cup of tea, but it's what we do."

That glint is back in his eye. Clearly he does enjoy a bit of danger - or is proud of himself for braving it, at least. Yet everything he does, he insists, is as safe as it can be. "We're not daredevils," he says. "We take calculated risks... If somebody said to me now, 'Jump through that window.' I'd say, 'No. Do I look stupid?' With a stunt it's different, because they'll put little dents in the window, so the second I go through it it's going to explode. And I'm going to wear knee pads and arm pads to protect myself. And there aren't going to be people walking past the window - or if there are they're going to be stunt performers who know I'm coming through." I glance outside. None of the well-dressed ladies of Henley look like stunt performers.

Forster's first paid stunt was in fact very similar to the scene he has just described. It was for a "water explosion" in the film Mission: Impossible. "Tom Cruise is in a restaurant in Prague," he recalls. "He throws his chewing gum at the [aquarium], and the restaurant caves in with water, and then he runs out of the restaurant. I was sitting opposite Tom Cruise when that happened, doubling the actor he was talking to. That was my first job."

Since then, he has worked on The Fifth Element, Tomorrow Never Dies, Lost in Space, Layer Cake, Dr Who, Life on Mars and many other projects. And yet still he is waiting to try the one stunt he has always dreamed of, the one that entices him even more than fire. "My absolute ultimate," he says, getting restless in his seat again, "and I was booked to do this a few years ago - although truthfully I would have done it free of charge - would be the classic jumping off a bridge on to a steam train, and running from carriage to carriage to carriage. Actually I would probably pay to do that. But they found somebody else."

Forster's chance to run along a train may yet come, although his time is running out. At the age of 40, as is normal in his profession, he now takes more work as a coordinator and less as a performer. "I feel like I've got another 10 years of performing in me," says Forster, who keeps fit practising karate. "and then we'll see what happens then. When I'm 50 I don't really want to be knocked down by a car or fall down stairs. Not because I don't want to," he adds hastily, as if anyone might doubt his enthusiasm, "just because of all the aches and pains."