Thrills pay the bills for Hawkins and Francis
A lack of funding made it difficult to compete, movie stunt work handed sporting pair a lucrative second career
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As Jess Hawkins put her foot on the accelerator and sent her Land Rover Defender flying off the ramp and 85 feet through the air, this entirely fictional high-speed chase scene suddenly felt very real.
It is a thrill and a sense of heightened focus that Hawkins thought she would only ever find in a racing car. But when the funding for her driving career ran dry, it was stunt work that paid the bills – and bagged her the role of a lifetime in the latest James Bond epic, No Time To Die. Hence why she found herself hurtling through – and then over – a field at the wheel of the Land Rover, all the while being tracked by a phalanx of film cameras.
“I love it,” says Hawkins. “At the time, racing was my world – and it still is. It was heartbreaking that I couldn’t continue. But then I found myself in this stunt world that I probably wouldn’t have found if I’d still been racing 100 per cent of the time. In a strange way, running out of money was actually probably one of the best things that ever happened to me.”
Hawkins, 26, is one of the original cohort of drivers from the inaugural 2019 W Series, the allfemale and all-expenses-paid driver championship aiming to elevate women in motorsport. She openly admits she could not afford to race if it was not for W Series fronting the bill for all of its drivers.
“Normally, the level that I would be racing at, I would have to pay to go racing. Whereas the stunt world, it’s a job, and there’s more opportunities to work.”
Currently placing 10th in the series rankings, ahead of the final two races of the year in Texas this month, Hawkins has been juggling the demands of the track with the glamour of red carpets in recent weeks, rubbing shoulders with Daniel Craig and the all-star cast of the 25th – and possibly most controversial – Bond film.
Yet she is far from alone and Olympic gymnast Danusia Francis, for one, can relate. When filming for Netflix space epic The Midnight Sky, directed by and starring George Clooney, she came face to face with the Hollywood A-lister.
“If I bumped into him now I doubt he’d remember me,” Francis laughs. “But he was trying to show the other stunt double what to do and came right up to me – literally nose-to-nose. I was just trying to act cool. Afterwards all the other girls were like, ‘Well done’. I wish someone had taken a photo – I’m never going to be that close to George Clooney again.”
A former Great Britain gymnast, Francis competed at Tokyo 2020 for Team Jamaica, but like Hawkins is becoming used to blockbuster filming alongside her sport. By chance, she was approached on Instagram in 2018 by a stunt double working on Wonder Woman 1984. Not long after, she found herself on the set of The Midnight Sky, replete with its
$200 million
budget, swinging in the air with 10 other women dressed as “Amazon Olympians” for the opening scene.
From that opportunity, Francis is now beginning to build a career in stunt work. It is not all glamour: she spends hours in uncomfortable harnesses and testing her core strength to the limit. But Francis enjoys it – and, like Hawkins, she has found it pays off. Earning up to £3,000 a week for the movie work, which can involve months of filming, meant she could hold off from doing odd jobs during her training blocks and fully focus on gymnastics ahead of Tokyo.
“That is a lot, lot more money than anything I’ve earned through gymnastics, and allows me to train full-time when filming is over,” she says.
The 27-year-old says she has entered the business at a time when representation of black women has improved, as more women of colour are being cast in lead roles.
“Where the movie industry is moving forward with diversity, naturally, the stunt doubles have to match the actors,” she says. “In previous years, they might have been able to get away with, like, turning a white woman or even turning a man and putting a wig on him. Now that doesn’t really fly with where we are in the world.
“If you can find a stunt woman with the correct skin colour, then I think it’s only right that everyone gets the opportunity.”
Both Hawkins and Francis would like to pursue stunt work as a potential career when they retire from sport, but are aware of the years of training across six different disciplines – including gymnastics, trampolining, diving, horse riding, driving and a mandatory martial art – and up to £30,000 needed to get the appropriate qualifications to join the official stunt register.
For now, using their specific expertise is their only option, but one they are taking full advantage of. For Hawkins, chasing that adrenalin rush is what motivates her.
“It’s very similar [to racing], as you’re always aware that you’re pushing yourself and the car to the absolute limit,” she says. “You’re always on the edge of the risk. I’d never call my racing or my stunt driving work, because how could it ever be work when you enjoy it?”
‘George Clooney came right up to me, nose-tonose.
I was trying to act cool’