Meet the ex-JFS pupil who left the circus to be a stuntwoman - The Jewish Chronicle

When Erin Jameson filled out a careers form at JFS she never imagined anyone would read it.

Asked what she wanted to do after leaving school, Jameson answered honestly: “I want to join the circus.”

A rabbi at the school later questioned whether this was really the case. And, yes, it was.
After completing her A Levels, Jameson, a Sinai primary school alumna, turned down an offer to study Sport and Exercise Science at Birmingham University so she could pursue a career in the circus.

“I spent most of my childhood cartwheeling around. I was upside down more than the right way up,” laughs South Africa-born Jameson. “I just could not see myself doing a nine-to-five.”

A Great Britain athlete who competed in acrobatic gymnastic competitions across Europe from Portugal to Belgium while studying for her GCSE exams, Jameson went on to master acrobatics in a live-performance setting.

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Erin training

Soon, her passion saw her perform in the West End, where she appeared in Carmen at the Royal Albert Hall and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies, before going on to travel the world with the Batman Live stage show.

On tour, she would double as a young Bruce Wayne, as well as performing a trapeze act in the character of Poison Ivy — a period that she describes as “the best time ever”.
But at the age of 25, she turned her attention to a long-term ambition. She wanted to become a stuntwoman. And she was prepared to put in a lot of hard work to make that dream come true.

Now aged 32, she has appeared in high-profile movie and TV series, from the upcoming Barbie film, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, to the House of the Dragon series, where she doubles for actress Milly Alcock as a young Rhaenyra Targaryen. For this, she has tested iconic “flying dragon” mechanisms and taken part in night shoots, getting home at 5am.

She specialises in applying her martial arts training to film “elevated fight” scenes or being “blown away” in explosions using wirework.

In Amazon thriller series Hanna, Jameson was actually hit by a car for one scene. “I tend to tell my parents what happened at work afterwards,” she says.

“You feel sore afterwards and you feel like you have taken a hit, but it’s more about the way you land. I think gymnastics helps with spatial awareness and knowing where you are in the air. But you do hope you can get the scene done in one shot.”

But for Jameson getting the jobs was no easy feat. While some stunt performers do represent themselves using social media as a promotional platform, she says she knew that joining the British Stunt Register would open a lot of doors.

To get on the register, she needed to master at least six sporting disciplines, reaching “instructor” level in them all. So she undertook training in gymnastics, martial art of kung fu, rock climbing, trampolining, high-diving and scuba diving.

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Erin in action

“I was definitely apprehensive going into training in my mid-twenties especially with a lot of different sports, but I am very goal-oriented,” says Jameson. She did her diving training in Majorca and rock climbing in the Peak District.

To pay for the training and qualification exams (an estimated £15,000), she set up her own business as a yoga teacher, leading classes from Hampstead Garden Suburb and Bushey, where she was living with her parents. She taught gymnastics to young children at Rosh Pinah primary school, as well as local nurseries.

And it worked. In November 2018, an eight-person panel at Pinewood Studios welcomed Jameson to the register — and that’s when the real adventure began.

“It was the best day ever,” she recalls. “You do all of this work to get there, and you don’t really realise what it means until you are on the register and working. It does change everything.

“It has to be your life for those training years. You do sports that you have never done before, but there is a level of shared respect with others who are on the register. You know that you have put in the same graft as everyone else.”

At five feet two inches, the petite stuntwoman expected to mainly double for children, but has actually discovered a whole repertoire of high-profile “actresses that are my height” — leading her to double as actress Lucy Hale in thriller series Ragdoll and Vanessa Hudgens in romantic comedy The Princess Switch.

She has also acted as a stunt double for a 12-year-old boy, as well as a 60-year-old woman.
Still, she believes there should be more diversity in the stunt industry, where women are in the minority and ethnic minorities are underrepresented.

Beyond that, with the advent of shows on channels such as Netflix, she says there are more work opportunities than ever before for stunters — irrespective of the rise of computer-generated imagery (CGI).

“We definitely need the stunts,” she says. “You will always be able to tell the difference between a real action shot and CGI.

“The use of technology is definitely beneficial, especially when it can take away some of the unnecessary risk, but the way someone moves and reacts needs to be as authentic as possible.”

Now, expecting her first child with her husband Paul Rose, whom she first met in class at JFS, she has taken a step back and says she is only taking on safer roles. Still, she does plan to return to the profession.

“Being a stuntwoman for the past four years has been brilliant,” she says. “Movement is so important to me. I have been an active person from a young age, it is a huge part of who I am.

“You just have to see what happens.”

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