Elizabeth Olsen Hated Doing Her Own Stunts: 'Waste of Everyone's Time'
Well, not everyone is Tom Cruise.
Stunt doubles exist for a reason: it is much safer for trained professionals to perform dangerous stunts than actors.
But sometimes studios push their stars to do stunts themselves for various reasons, such as reducing the cost of visual effects by hiding it, or simply using it as a marketing strategy.
However, the actors are not always happy with that.
Elizabeth Olsen, who plays Wanda Maximoff aka Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, recently shared her experience with the matter during her appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
She compared the feeling to riding a roller coaster when "your stomach leaves you," which is not to everyone's taste.
Olsen then went on to describe a scene from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness where she had to fall and land from 30 feet up, which had to be reshot several times.
While the actress didn't do all of the stunts, she still had to do most of them, which she called ridiculous and a "waste of everyone's time."
Elizabeth is right, because it is the job of trained stuntmen to replace actors in such scenes.
There are many examples in movie history where actors have been seriously injured, sometimes with lifelong consequences, while performing dangerous stunts themselves.
Burt Reynolds injured his back so badly while filming a river scene for his movie Deliverance that it took him two years to recover, and even then it left permanent damage for the rest of his life.
Of course, for some franchises, having the actors do their own stunts is part of the marketing strategy.
People go to see John Wick or Mission Impossible movies in part because they want to see Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise do dangerous things on screen without the help of stunt doubles.
But even then, the production of the movie might be stopped for a while because the main star risks breaking a limb or two.
So it's easy to understand why Elizabeth Olsen wasn't exactly thrilled about doing her own stunts. This is the job of the doubles, and not using them can be irresponsible and dangerous.