EXTRAORDINARY KIWIS. STUNT-STAR ZOE BELL

Starting out as a keen young gymnast with a taste for martial arts, Zoe Bell’s first job as a stunt double was jumping out of a car in Shortland Street’. She got her first big break doubling for Lucy Lawless on 'Xena'.

“ ‘Xena' was like my tertiary education in stunting”, Bell says. For three years, while all her friends were at university she learnt “all that stuff you can't learn out of a book.”

These days she works alongside Hollywood names such as Uma Thurman (’Kill Bill’), and Sharon Stone (’Catwoman’). Bell has worked her way to the top of her profession, and now she’s taking an unusual step for a stunt double - she is about to star as herself in director Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, Grindhouse’/ Death Proof’.

- adapted from www.throng.co.nz, 17/11/2010.