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talent spotting
Compiled by Jane Crowther
Nikki Berwick
ikki Berwick (pictured above with Angelina Jolie) has recently won one of the highest accolades in a profes- sion that’s integral to modern movies – but her job relies on the audience knowing little about her.
At last year’s World Stunt Awards Berwick and fellow stunt- women Amanda Foster and Jamie Blake walked away with best overall stunt by a stunt woman for their collaborative effort in Die Another Day.
Berwick doubled for Rosamund Pike to Foster’s Halle Berry as the duo kicked seven bells out of each other on a crashing plane. “I always said I wanted to double a Bond girl and I did.”
A professional martial arts champion (she specialises in Tang Soo Do) Berwick was a world champion when she was hired as a fight double on Mortal Kombat: Annihilation in 1996.
She enjoyed the experience so much that she started training to become a registered stunt- woman after teaching Rachel Weisz and Patricia Vasquez to fight with an Egyptian sword on The Mummy Returns.
She was so good on the film that she ended up working for seven months as a stunt double.
A specialist in martial arts, weapon-work and choreography plus general stunts, Berwick was quickly recommended for work on Tomb Raider 1 and 2 – where she doubled for and trained
Angelina Jolie – and also Blade II. Though Jolie did many of her
own stunts, Berwick doesn’t feel edged out by hands-on stars. “It’s brilliant for me because when peo- ple say ‘gosh, how did Angelina learn to use a weapon like that?’ I can say ‘I trained her’.”
Most recently twenty-six year old Berwick doubled for Lady Penelope in the forthcoming Thunderbirds film and is currently working in Morocco on period epic Alexander with Colin Farrell.
“A lot of people do stunts and audiences don’t really appreci- ate the work on the screen. I’ve been very lucky that it’s all big box office movies.”
ODliver Krimpas
irector Oliver Krimpas admits that the subject (human geography) of his formative college years didn’t necessarily indicate a career in film.
The discipline of study did make him focus on his future, though, and as an avid film fan, he decided to look at working in the film industry from a practical point of view. Rather than plump straight for film school, Krimpas got a job as a post-production runner on The Sheltering Sky.
The experience convinced him to apply for a masters in film at Boston University which facili- tated a move to Los Angeles where he became a partner in a production company while he built his reel.
As a new director, Krimpas start- ed out making commercials but
“didn’t get anything very juicy” and his frustration led to his first film Walking Home – a short about a couple who flirt on the tube only for things to turn darker when the woman is followed home.
“The idea was to make it and if I didn’t like what I’d done, I could just chuck it in the bin and it wouldn’t cost me anything.”
Rather than turn out bin-worthy, Walking Home won numerous awards at short film festivals around the world, attracting the attention of BAFTA member and writer Lucy Floyd. Krimpas was signed up to direct her Film Council funded short Hard Labour.
A dark comedy about an au pair’s revenge, the film has also done well on the festival circuit and given Krimpas an agent and plenty of options for his next project.
A TV project, possible book adaptation and a theatrical fea- ture are all in the mix but for Krimpas, 34, the aim is just to get to make films “that people want to see.”
JMo s i e L a w
any film school graduates are taken with the idea of directing or writing but Josie Law knew she wanted to go into producing from day one.
“I thrive on organising and being involved in driving things forward and as soon as I realised producing wasn’t just about put- ting together deals and financ- ing, it appealed to me. Initially I thought it wouldn’t be very cre-
ative, but it really can be.”
A first class graduate in Film, Television and Theatre from the
University of Glasgow, Law, 28, worked for a number of film and TV companies in the UK and Canada (including assisting Marc Samuelson on Gabriel And Me) before winning a place at the National Film & Television School.
One of her student films at the NFTS, Last Rumba In Rochdale. won a slew of awards and gave Law a full contacts book. An ani- mated short written and directed by John Chorlton and featuring the voices of Anna Friel, Jane Horrocks, Timothy Spall, Peter Kay and Liza Tarbuck, the heartwarm- ing tale made Law more than amenable to producing anima- tion in the future.
After graduation Law became assistant producer on American Cousins with Bard Entertainments, co-produced a short, Spyhole, and is currently head of develop- ment at Illuminated Films.
But she’s keen to develop her own independent projects, recent- ly setting up Lunar Productions to concentrate on developing and producing live action and animat- ed film plus television.
For now though, her biggest concern is an adaptation of Stuart David’s book The Peacock Manifesto, which she’ll be pro- ducing with Marc Samuelson.
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