Daisy Hughes

I am Daisy Hughes. I'm in London right now in Camden and I'm a stunt woman.

Most of my time is filming on set on productions, mainly film, lot of TV, predominantly fighting and doing stunts.

It generally starts with a very early alarm, potentially as early as three o'clock, sometimes earlier.

And then I drive maybe an hour to a studio or location, often to like Pinewood Studios or Warner Brothers Studios.

And I'll get there and straight away go into hair and makeup and costume, can be crazy costumes.

And then from about 8am we'd start filming, we film generally until 6pm.

And then drive home, eat, meditate and then go to sleep.

So there's lots of different teams. I'm on the stunt team and then we interact with all the other kind of parts of film. So camera department, lighting department, ADs, supporting artists, actors.

So there's loads of different teams but within my team it's a real range of maybe people in their early 20s to could be like late 60s.

There are many best things. Working on... I'd say working with so many people of such a high skill on very exciting projects that feel bold and very challenging.

The fear. I feel the fear. A lot of fear. Lots of scary moments and also the pain like even just on my wrists now you can see. Yeah that's just from training.

Yeah, it's hard. It's the long hours sometimes like 16-hour days. And there's a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility as well. It's very... this can be really dangerous what we're doing.

I started off as an actress, went to RADA and trained as an actor and then worked in theatre and some film and TV.

I met someone when I was 20 years old who was finishing off his stunt training. I've never heard of it before but I was interested in movement and what a body is capable of.

And he told me all about it and I looked online at what the requirements were and just thought it's impossible for me to do. So I put it at the back of my mind. And every six months I'd have another look.

And it wasn't until about six years later that I finally got the courage to start the training process. And that took just kind of two years for me to get to a position where I could start.

So I retrained as a personal trainer and a yoga teacher to find my way through my training.

And it took six and a half years to qualify and so it was a long journey.

I think I learned at school how to... like how my brain works. It's something that I've had to hone throughout but I am very dyslexic and I always like needed a lot of extra time. Well, the amount of extra time that you can have, I needed all of it and more.

But I learned that when I was revising for exams and stuff, I needed to like make my revision notes, but I couldn't just learn them if I was sat at the table. I'd need to like go for a walk and then I'd remember where I was on the walk in terms of where like I could see... I've not got a picture memory but I could feel and see where I was to know... it just went in my mind better.

And so that taught me how I need to learn and all the time what I have to do for my work is pick up new things, learn choreography and take notes, adapt, change.

And so it's that kind of like mindset of realising where I've got like a downfall, which might be dyslexia or it might be something else and like trying to understand how to then use that to my advantage.

It's tricky. But I have got so many friends in the stunt world and the thing that I am really inspired by by all my friends is they're so excited and hungry to learn and change and improve. That's something that is, I think, is a really high currency.

So I don't have so much time to spend with my friends who aren't in that industry, which is a shame. I try and make sure that, you know, once a month I do something, but it's really hard to balance.

My husband's really kind of supportive, so he helps, because I'm often not at home very much.

And meditation, like I've got really into meditation, which helps when you're not able to sleep so much.

I can't say much about it because it's still not released yet but there was a film that I worked on last year, it's called Jack of Spades.

And I was being directed by Joel Coen and Frances McDormand in a very intense scene. And it was... they're truly masters of their trade. And it was a really incredible thing to be a part of.

So I think that people change, you can change.

I found at school often you can get put into an umbrella of like what kind of person you are. Are you the late one or are you the shy one or are you the petite one or are you the loud one?

And I don't think that's like super, it's not always super beneficial when you leave school because you might not want to be that person anymore. You might want to change that.

And I was the really like petite, like slight, weak one. And it's been amazing for me personally to become very strong and capable. So I think just knowing that, but it took me a long time to get there, way longer than it could have done.

So I think just knowing that you can completely change at any point. You don't have to hold on to other people or your friends at school or the teachers, whatever that kind of category is that they've labeled you with.