INSIDE THE WORLD OF AN AUSSI STUNT DOUB
FROM FIGHTING HUGH JACKMAN TO SURVIVING THE AUSSIE OUTBACK, KY’S LIFE IS FULL OF ADVENTURE
Ky Furneaux fractured her spine in a terrifying car accident at just 19 years old. Her doctors weren’t hopeful about her recovery and, as she lay on her back immobile for three months, her future was looking bleak.
“I was told I’d never be physically active again. I wouldn’t play tennis or netball and I might never be able to carry a baby,” Ky, now 48, tells New Idea. “But my parents always said that the way to make me do something was to tell me I couldn’t. I wanted to show the doctor what my body was capable of.”
Over the next three years Ky, who grew up in Adelaide, started rock climbing, tentatively pushing herself further and harder.
“I started realising how wrong the diagnosis was,” she says.
Ky got a job teaching kids to kayak, climb and hike. It was a throwaway line from a boy that was to shape the next two decades of her life.
“We were rolling down a sand dune and he said: ‘You should be a stunt woman,’” Ky says. “I wish I could remember who that kid was because after that, it’s what I became.”
Ky moved to Vancouver where she says she “got lucky” because she was one of only a handful of female stunt women. After training in martial arts for three years, she was also the only one who could fight.
“I remember texting my dad: ‘I’m fighting Hercules,’” she says, recalling one of her first jobs as a stunt double opposite Kevin Sorbo in the TV series, Hercules.
“After that I doubled for actresses including Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway and Sharon Stone, who was the baddie in Catwoman. I fought Hugh Jackman in Wolverine and featured in stunts for
The Avengers, Thor and Pirates of the Caribbean.
“Most of the people I worked with were great, but I don’t think you can go past the Aussie boys: Chris Hemsworth and Hugh [Jackman]. They have such a beautiful work ethic and are
‘I PUT MY BODY ON THE LINE EVERY DAY ... IF YOU’RE GETTING SET ON FIRE, YOU WILL BE BURNT’
lovely to everyone from the top to the bottom end of the crew.”
But the work wasn’t all rosy and Ky says frequent injuries were part of it.
“I put my body on the line every day. You have to accept that if you’re getting set on fire, you will get burnt somewhere, and if you’re falling down concrete stairs, there will be bruises.”
After winning the 2012 Award for the Best Female Stunt Performer in the world, Ky was ready to try her hand in front of the camera, buoyed by her other passion – outdoor survival.
“At that time there were no other female survival experts on TV and I wanted to be a role model,” she says. “I’d
always loved the outdoors and trekking the 160km across the Sierra Nevada with only a pocket knife taught me a lot.”
It also led to her successful stint on Discovery Channel’s reality series, Naked and Afraid.
The only thing missing in Ky’s life was love, but that gap has recently been filled.
“I met Calem [O’grady] through Instagram and we had a date in the UK when I was visiting from the States in 2019,” Ky says.
Then COVID hit, and the pair met up in Australia to ride out lockdown, living off the grid.
“We ended up in a stone cottage with no electricity or running water for seven months,” Ky laughs. “It was a pretty full-on second date.”
Ky says if she and Calem can survive the Aussie outback together, they can survive anything. She is now getting ready to launch her survival guide in 2022, the first to be written by a woman, and is sure there are more adventures waiting for her.
“If I could see that doctor who told me I wouldn’t be active again now, I’d tell him not to put his limitations on me,” she says, with a smile.