10 Incredible Times Ordinary People Performed Movie-Style Stunts

Cinema would not be the same without stuntmen and women. Most of the time, when the world sees movie stars leaping from great heights, engaging in combat, and crashing through glass, it is actually another person with years of training performing the stunts. But every so often, ordinary people find themselves thrust into the same sort of far-fetched situations that stunt performers face in their jobs.

Most of the time, these situations end in tragedy, but some people occasionally survive them through luck and will. Those who do often end up with crazy stories that they will be telling for the rest of their lives. Some even achieve a brief period of local or national fame. Here are ten of the most absurd stories of ordinary people who accidentally ended up performing movie-style stunts.

Related: Ten Comic Book Superheroes Based on Real People

10 Fighting off a Bear

The typical advice for surviving a bear encounter is to make oneself appear large and threatening by waving arms, clapping, and shouting. However, this only works if the bear is seen approaching. For one woman walking her dog in the town of Leavenworth, Washington, back in 2022, this was not possible. In an incredibly unlikely turn of events—there had been only 19 harmful encounters and one fatal one with a bear in the entire state since 1970—she was ambushed by a fully-grown black bear.

It charged at her before she had the chance to try and scare it away and knocked her to the ground. Fortunately for her, but unfortunately for the bear, she instinctively chose to fight back. Although some say that playing dead is a good strategy for surviving a bear attack, this only really works if the bear is defending something, such as its cubs. In this case, the woman punched it right on the nose. This turned out to be the right strategy as the bear stopped attacking, and she escaped with non-life-threatening injuries.^[1]

9 Punching a Gunman to Save a Princess

Ronnie Russell was a manager at a cleaning firm just trying to get home one evening in March 1974 when his car was held up on the Mall—the lengthy tree-lined road that leads to Buckingham Palace in London. He thought it was a road rage incident but soon realized that something much more serious was happening. The road was blocked by a man named Ian Ball, who had jumped out of his car armed with two revolvers and approached another car. Inside the car was Princess Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, who Ball planned to kidnap.

Ball shot her royal protection officer, chauffeur, and a police constable, and he might have succeeded had it not been for two things. One was Anne’s personal bravery, telling Ball “not bloody likely” when he ordered her at gunpoint to leave her car. His other mistake was holding up Ronnie Russell. Russell was not only a cleaner but also a 6-foot-2-inch (1.88-meter) tall heavyweight boxer. He rushed and punched Ball twice as hard as he could, flooring the gunman and allowing Anne to escape. He later received a medal and was personally thanked by the queen.^[2]

8 Confronting Knife-Wielding Terrorists with Bare Hands

It was also in London that a 47-year-old father called Roy Larner found himself in a fight with very poor odds. He had been enjoying a meal at the Black and Blue steakhouse in Borough Market on June 3, 2017, when three terrorists armed with knives burst through the door. They had already driven a van along the sidewalk of London Bridge, resulting in several injuries and deaths. When they reached Borough Market, they left their van and began attacking customers inside pubs and restaurants with knives.

Despite their weapons and fake suicide vests, Larner confronted the attackers with a cry of “I’m Millwall”—a reference to his favorite soccer team, whose fans have a well-established reputation for violence and hooliganism. Although Larner was unarmed, he took on the attackers, grabbing and swinging them around. This allowed the rest of the diners time to make their way to the back of the restaurant.

Larner survived even after being slashed and stabbed multiple times, including in the neck. His bravery earned him the nickname the “Lion of London Bridge” and a medal.^[3]

7 Jumping a Bus over the Tower Bridge Gap

Stunt performers are also used when scripts call for car chases and other dangerous driving stunts, like when two cars jump over a raised bridge in 2 Fast 2 Furious. Surprisingly, that scene may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. A similar feat was once achieved on London’s Tower Bridge, not by a stunt performer, though, but by a bus driver with a bus full of passengers.

It happened in December 1952, when—without warning—the southern part of the bridge began to rise while the bus was driving across it. The driver, Albert Gunter, had only a split second to weigh his options. He decided that the risk of stopping the bus was greater than speeding up and going for the jump. He figured that if he stopped the bus and nobody saw it in time, it could have toppled into the river.

Instead, he floored the accelerator, and the bus successfully traversed the gap. However, it landed hard enough to result in a couple of injuries. Albert Gunter was rewarded with money, a vacation, and an invitation for his children to attend a party hosted by the Lord Mayor of the City of London.^[4]

6 Escaping a Fire like a Ninja

Albert Gunter is not the only person on this list with the courage to cross a gap at a deadly height. Curtis Reissig, a 56-year-old construction worker, was also able to perform some impressive aerial maneuvers to save his own life in 2014. Alerted of a fire at the Houston apartment complex where he was working, Reissig grabbed a fire extinguisher and went up to the roof to try and fight it. This turned out to be a bad decision, and by the time he had made his way back onto the fifth floor, the flames had spread, and smoke was everywhere.

Reissig found his way onto a balcony, but with the flames close behind him, he urgently needed to find a way down. Firefighters had arrived, but Reissig saw that their ladder would not reach him before the fire did, so he decided to try and swing onto the balcony below. Miraculously, he pulled off the death-defying feat. On the fourth-floor balcony, Reissig then had to climb across the two-foot gap between the balcony and the fire crew’s ladder. Almost as soon as he had made it, the building collapsed behind him.^[5]

5 Scaling a Burning Building to Save Mom

According to one of the firefighters who rescued him, the technical term for what Curtis Reissig did is “Spiderman it down.” It can, therefore, be assumed that to climb up balconies is to “Spiderman it up,” which is a pretty accurate way to describe what a Philadelphia man called Jermaine did in July 2019 when he thought his mother was in danger from a fire in her apartment complex. The 35-year-old sprang into action after being alerted that the 19-story building where their mother lived was on fire and that she could not get out.

When he arrived at the scene, he found police blocking the entrance to the building. Knowing that his mother, who lived on the 15th floor, would be unable to escape, he made the decision to climb up the outside of the building to get to her. Without any kind of safety equipment and despite the fact that he had injured his hip earlier in the day, he actually managed to reach her. By the time he did, the fire was under control. After confirming that his mother was fine, he actually climbed back down again.^[6]

4 Falling from the Hindenburg

Despite its reputation as one of history’s great disasters, most people on board the Hindenburg airship, which burst into flames in 1937, actually survived. Most did so by jumping out. After realizing that the ship was burning, they figured that their chances of surviving the fall were greater than remaining on board. They were right, and more importantly, they were right in time. The fire took less than a minute to consume the airship.

The Hindenburg was trying to dock at the end of its journey when the disaster happened but was still around 50 feet (15 meters) high when some people were jumping out. One of these was eight-year-old Werner Doehner, who was thrown out by his mother along with his older brother. Their mother then followed them out, breaking her pelvis but surviving. The two boys also survived. Somehow, they were not harmed by the fall, although they did get burned.^[7]

3 Falling from an Exploding Plane

Vesna Vulović is the undisputed champion of falling from great heights, and her story is so shocking that people might struggle to suspend their disbelief if they saw it in the cinema. Vulović was a stewardess on board an ill-fated flight in January 1972 when she unintentionally set the record for the highest fall survived without a parachute. The plane was flying over Czechoslovakia when a bomb hidden in the luggage compartment detonated, splitting the plane into three pieces at precisely 33,333 feet (10,160 m) in the air.

Vulović was trapped underneath a food cart at the tail end of the plane when it happened, so she was not sucked out like everybody else. Her luck continued as the tail hurtled toward an area of ground that was covered with thick snow, hitting it at just the right angle to reduce the impact. She was found and given first aid by a local from a nearby village before being taken to a hospital. She had several severe injuries but made an almost full recovery and went on to live to the age of 66. She became an icon in her home country of Yugoslavia and even had a folk song written about her.^[8]

2 Landing a Plane with No Flight Experience

There is a reason why commercial aircraft have co-pilots, and what happened to Yvonne Kinane-Wells helps to demonstrate why they are so important. In October 2024, she was enjoying a flight from Las Vegas to California in a small plane flown by her husband, Eliot, when he suddenly slumped over. The 78-year-old had had a mid-air heart attack. No longer able to handle the controls, his wife was the only person who could take over and land the plane safely—but Yvonne was no pilot.

Despite being panicked, she was able to spring into action quickly. She spoke to air traffic control to alert them of what was happening. They were able to give her step-by-step instructions on how to steer the plane toward the nearest airport and make an emergency landing. Brave Yvonne was able to remain calm and do as she was told, landing the plane safely in Bakersfield, California, although she’d never had control of an aircraft before. Unfortunately, her husband did not survive, but she decided to honor him by getting her pilot’s license.^[9]

1 Surviving a Mafia Car-Tampering

When people envision an MIT math professor, they probably do not imagine the kind of person who gets mixed up with the mob, but Edward O. Thorp does not fit the bookish stereotype. Before going on to make a fortune as a hedge fund manager, the math whizz and former MIT professor found himself firmly on the wrong side of some very dangerous people when he invented the art of card counting in the early 1960s. After the Washington Post said that his findings were a scam, he went to Vegas to prove that his system worked, soon getting banned from many of the city’s casinos.

However, things took a darker turn in 1964 when he was playing at the Dunes casino, which was known to have Mafia connections. First, he was given a drugged coffee, which caused him to lose his focus. The next day, while driving home with his wife, the accelerator pedal in his car locked as he drove down a steep hill. Luckily, he was able to think clearly and act quickly, switching off the engine and bringing the vehicle safely to a halt. He would later discover that his car had been tampered with.^[10]