David Leitch's The Fall Guy is a highly anticipated action comedy starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. Loosely based on the 1980s television show of the same name, The Fall Guy is a tribute to stunt performers, the unsung heroes of action movies. Leitch began his career as a stuntman, doubling for major movie stars such as Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. Over the last decade, Leitch has established himself as a prominent action director, making movies such as John Wick, Deadpool 2, and Bullet Train.

Although not as well known to mainstream audiences, stuntmen such as Yakima Canutt, Dar Robinson, and Vic Armstrong played significant roles in the development of action cinema, inventing many stunt practices used in the moviemaking process. While stunt performers are an invaluable component of action films, some actors throughout history have transcended their craft by performing their own stunts. Movie stars such as Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, and Keanu Reeves mastered the art of stunt performance, elevating the status of their action films to the upper echelon of cinema's elite works.

10 Barbara Stanwyck Is An Honorary Member Of The Hollywood Stuntmen's Hall Of Fame

• Forty Guns
• The Big Valley
• The Furies

Arguably the greatest Hollywood actress to never win an Academy Award, Barbara Stanwyck continually defied the typical passive female roles of the era in favor of tough-minded, determined roles that mirrored her own personality. Stanwyck was a versatile talent who excelled in a wide variety of genres that included film noir, screwball comedy, and romantic drama. However, it was Stanwyck's work in the Western genre that turned her into a legendary stunt performer.

Throughout her career, the strong-willed Stanwyck vehemently insisted on performing her own stunts, no matter how dangerous they were to execute. One of Stanwyck's most famous stunts occurred in the Samuel Fuller Western Forty Guns. The sequence called for Stanwyck's character to fall off and get dragged by a horse, which the production's stuntman refused to perform because of its potential danger. Stanwyck, who was 50 years old at the time of Forty Guns' release, nailed the difficult stunt to perfection. Later in her career, and now in her 60s, Stanwyck starred in the Western television show The Big Valley, which again features Stanwyck performing many of her own stunts. In reference to The Big Valley, Stanwyck stated, "I just didn't want to play the part of a darling old lady with a lavender blanket over my knees. To tell the truth, I think I'm a very frustrated stuntwoman."

9 Maureen O'Hara Was The "Queen Of Technicolor"

• The Black Swan
• At Sword's Point
• McLintock!

Hailing from Ireland, Maureen O'Hara moved to Hollywood at 19 years old and became one of the best female stars of Hollywood's Golden Era. Due to her exquisite physical beauty and awe-inspiring red hair, O'Hara earned the moniker the "Queen of Technicolor." Through iconic performances in adventure and Western movies, O'Hara emerged as one of the very few female Golden Era stars allowed to perform her own stunts.

In her youth, O'Hara was a self-proclaimed "tomboy" who loved partaking in sports, even the sports that women were not yet permitted to play in Ireland. O'Hara utilized her natural athletic ability to her advantage during her film career, performing her own stunts in movies such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Black Swan. For her performance in the adventure film At Sword's Point, O'Hara became proficient in fencing to ensure she would perform all of her own sword fighting scenes. Another of O'Hara's more memorable roles came in the Western comedy McLintock!, where she falls backward off a ladder into a trough and participates in the madcap mud slide fight. Colleagues of O'Hara used to joke that she deserved a Purple Heart for all the times she injured herself performing stunts.

8 Keanu Reeves Resurrected His Career With The John Wick Franchise

• John Wick Franchise
• The Matrix
• Speed

During the late 1980s and through the 1990s, Keanu Reeves was one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Films such as River's Edge, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and My Own Private Idaho helped establish Reeves as a viable actor, while movies like Point Break, Speed, and The Matrix turned Reeves into one of the world's most famous action heroes. Following a critical and box office lull in the 2000s, Reeves resurrected his career through the John Wick franchise, which features some of the greatest stunt work of all time.

Reeves has extensive martial arts training in both Judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which he puts on full display with the John Wick franchise's gun-fu action aesthetic. In 2017, Olympic gold medalist Nomura Tadahiro presented Reeves with an honorary black belt in Judo. The John Wick franchise has played a substantial role in the evolution of American action films, offering audiences long takes, still cameras, and medium or long shots that highlight the skills of the performer, which is in direct contrast to the handheld camerawork and montage editing that dominated Hollywood cinema throughout the 2000s. According to Reeves, he performs approximately 90 to 95 percent of the stunts in the John Wick franchise.

7 Tom Cruise Pulls Off Death-Defying Stunts In The Mission: Impossible Franchise

• Mission: Impossible Franchise
• Top Gun
• Edge of Tomorrow

Since the start of the 1980s, it is hard to find a movie star more popular than Tom Cruise. Of the ten highest-grossing actors of all time, Cruise is the only one not attached to the Marvel franchise. In an era when the status of movie stars has come into question, it appears as though audiences still flock to see Cruise, regardless of role. While certainly a gifted dramatic actor, it is Cruise's stunt work in the Mission: Impossible franchise that has become the stuff of legend.

It seems with each subsequent release of a new Mission: Impossible movie, Cruise further ups the ante by pulling off increasingly outrageous death-defying stunts. Some of Cruise's most notable stunts from the Mission: Impossible franchise include hanging off the side of an A400 cargo plane in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, attempting over 100 HALO jumps in Mission: Impossible - Fallout, scaling the Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, and motorcycle jumping into a free fall in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. Although difficult to fathom, Cruise has only been seriously injured once filming the Mission: Impossible movies, breaking his ankle while jumping from building to building in Mission: Impossible - Fallout.

6 Douglas Fairbanks Dazzled Silent Era Audiences With His Daring Stunt Work

• The Mark of Zorro
• Robin Hood
• The Thief of Bagdad

Nicknamed "The King of Hollywood," Douglas Fairbanks was one of the most influential celebrities of the 1920s. Not only was Fairbanks one of the era's biggest box office stars, but he was also a founding member of United Artists and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As an actor, Fairbanks made a name for himself by starring in countless seminal swashbuckling films, performing many of his own stunts in an era that lacked modern safety technology.

Fairbanks' good looks and athletic build made him the ideal leading man for Hollywood's silent era. In swashbuckling films such as The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood, and The Thief of Bagdad, Fairbanks dazzled audiences with his acrobatic action sequences that predate the worldwide popularity of parkour by decades. Typical Fairbanks action scenes found him vaulting over objects, jumping across rooftops, and ascending impossible heights. An advocate of physical exercise, Fairbanks remained in superb shape late into his career, performing crowd-pleasing stunts well into his 40s in films such as The Black Pirate and The Gaucho.

5 Bruce Lee Helps Introduce Western Audiences To Chinese Martial Arts