Giant of Hollywood Stuntman has to stay ahead of the threat from movie AI
HE has been shot at by stormtroopers, thrown from a horse in Middle Earth and hurled himself off the top of a ship’s mast while battling Charlton Heston’s Sherlock Holmes.
Now actor and stuntman Kiran Shah is facing his biggest challenge yet – AI.
The 4ft 1in star, who is in the Guinness Book Of Records as the world’s shortest stuntman, fears new technology will soon allow directors to shrink tall actors to elvish and dwarven proportions.
“That’s going to happen,” says the 67-year-old. “It’s going to put a lot of people out of work.”
Kiran has managed to stay ahead of the curve since he broke into the film industry in the 1970s, and plays the lead elf in new comedy There’s Something in the Barn.
Born in Nairobi, Kenya, he moved to London at the age of 12 and was studying mime at the Red Buddha Theatre Company when he decided to try to get into movies.
One of his earliest jobs was being a scale double for Christopher Reeve in the 1978 hit Superman. Whenever we see Superman flying in the distance, that’s a young Kiran.
But even then, he felt threatened by the march of movie technology, in this case painted-on “blue screen” backgrounds.
He recalls: “I thought ‘they won’t need me any more’. So I thought I need to use that technology to my advantage.”
But even though AI may be a threat, he thinks things are looking up for little actors. He attributes a change in attitude to Terry Gilliam, who cast little people as leads in 1981’s Time Bandits.
“That didn’t happen before and I do give him credit for that,” he says.
“And there are a lot more opportunities for little people now. You just need to look at what Warwick Davis, Deep Roy and Peter Dinklage are doing”.
“They can be doctors, accountants or anything. Why not use little people?”
Kiran served Indiana Jones poisoned dates in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), then broke into creature work in The Dark Crystal (1982). Sherlock Holmes fans may recognise him as Charlton Heston’s enemy Tonga from 1991’s Crucifer Of Blood, in which he performed his own stunts.
He says the most memorable day involved jumping into a freezing River Thames from the mast of a tall ship. “I can’t swim,” he admits. “But I know I won’t sink.”
He narrowly missed out on play ing R2-D2 in the first Star Wars movie. But he did play a robot, an Ewok and perform stunts in Return Of The Jedi. When the franchise rebooted with 2015’s The Force Awakens, Kiran went on to star in all five sequels and spin-offs. “Without that first Star Wars, I don’t k what I would be doing,” he says.
When Peter Jackson cast Elijah Woo Frodo Baggins in his Lord Of The R trilogy, he called on the talented mimi
“I was an acting double, not just a d he says. “You have to look like them their mannerisms and feel what they f
It was on Jackson’s blockbuster trilog Kiran suffered his most serious stunt i
“It was the last month of the last p from the very last fight in the last Lord Rings film, The Return Of The King,” h
“I was double riding the horse and fighting. I came off and broke my back.”
After three months, Kiran was back to work. His role as Ginarrbrik, Tilda Swinton’s sidekick in 2005’s The
Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe led directly to his latest part.
In There’s Something in the Barn, Kiran plays “a barn elf”, a creature taken from Scandinavian mythology.
He says: “The director of photography’s wife was watching The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe on TV. She called him in from the kitchen and said ‘I think you’ve got your little guy’.”
There’s Something in the Barn available on digital services now. news@irishmirror.ie