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Wikipedia / Nick Gillard

Nick Gillard is an English stuntman and stunt coordinator. He is best known as the lead lightsaber fight and stunt coordinator of the Star Wars prequel trilogy films (1999–2005).

Early life

Gillard was born in Brighton, England. At the age of twelve, he ran away from military school to join the circus where he performed as bareback horse rider. Over the next few years Gillard worked with several circus's including Circus Althoff in Germany and Los Muchachos Circus in Spain. Gillard was invited to do stunts on The Thief of Baghdad. He enjoyed it, and later left the circus to perform stunt work in films, including the original Star Wars. Gillard was Mark Hamill's first choice as his stunt double for Return of the Jedi, though he only doubled for Hamill in the subsequent Britannia Hospital.

Career

As a stuntman, Gillard held the world record for longest fire stunt, with a fire burn without air for over two minutes on Alien 3. He also performed a 200-foot power boat jump over two bridges in the film Amsterdamned, and was set on fire over 100 times.

Among Gillard's movie credits are Sleepy Hollow, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Gillard was the fight choreographer of the Star Wars prequels. He had a cameo appearance in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith as Cin Drallig ("Nic Gillard" spelled backwards). His likeness was used for the character with a larger role in the accompanying video game, for which Gillard choreographed the combat animations.

Filmography

As stunt coordinator, arranger or performer

Film

Television

Video games

As second unit director

Year

Title

Director

1999

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

George Lucas

2000

Shaft

John Singleton

2002

Reign of Fire

Rob Bowman

As actor

Film

Television

References