Bobby is a 28 year old Stuntman and has been doing stunts in movies since the beginning of 2008. He has performed in such blockbuster action films as "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises", "Quantum of Solace", "Harry Potter", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Sherlock Holmes", "Captain America", "Robin Hood", the Oscar winning "Inception", "Skyfall" and "Thor" to name but a few. This has involved being a stunt double for the likes of Chris Hemsworth, Christian Bale, Daniel Craig, Ryan Reynolds, and Jake Gyllenhaal. At the tender age of four, Bobby started his career as a Gymnast, and climbed through the ranks to compete as a National Squad Member and National Gold Medallist for Great Britain. Bobby competed and also won gold medals in countries such as France, Russia, United States of America, and training camps in the Ukraine. Bobby retired from Gymnastics at 17 and turned his attention to football, quickly becoming a semi-professional footballer for Fareham Town FC at the age of 19. With his huge appetite for performing unabated, he started to perform in Live Action Shows, Pantomimes, various TV Shows and worldwide modelling campaigns & commercials for K-Swiss trainers, Adidas, Pepsi, Joop aftershave and many more. Some of these jobs found Bobby doubling Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres, and David Beckham before he decided to become a professional Stunt Performer. Bobby then trained in all the disciplines needed to achieve the goal of becoming a Stuntman, which took the best part of 4 years (training full time). This meant qualifying in skills such as Kickboxing, Swimming, and 10m High Diving, Gymnastics, Trampolining, and Scuba Diving. Since then Bobby has performed in 22 full feature movies, alongside such luminaries as Natalie Portman, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Samuel L Jackson, Jonny Depp, Leonardo di Caprio, Sir Ben Kingsley, Geoffrey Rush, Tom hanks, Angelina Jolie, Judy Dench and for directing greats like Chris Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Paul Greengrass and Ridley Scott. His career has seen Bobby winning 2 SAG Awards for "Inception" and "Harry Potter the Deathly Hollows", with 2 further SAG 2013 nominations for "The Dark Knight Rises" and "Skyfall". Bobby has also received 2 Taurus World Stunt Award nominations for "Quantum of Solace" and "the Prince of Persia the Sands of Time", and a 2009 Guinness World Record for the most targets hit with a back somersault throw in one hour.
Here Bobby tackles a new challenge. Promoting a new car. The Ford B-Max. The tagline for the commercial is ‘Life Is An Open Door’ which is exactly what Bobby will be diving through in order to capture the moment. The promo is being directed by non-other than veteran James Bond director Martin Campbell. The man who gave us Pierce Brosnan as Bond in Goldeneye and saved the franchise and the man who returned to save it again with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. The shooting location is Barcelona and Bobby is under the watchful eye of stunt co-ordinator Tom Struthers.
The idea is that Bobby climbs up onto the diving board, looks down and sees the car suspended below him. The doors open, he dives through the car, into the pool!
Now the mathematics has to be applied to this to give it a sense of realism. If he dives in the glorious swan like fashion he adopts at the top of the board he’ll hit the car and probably kill himself. So a mechanism was created allowing him to dive straight and true every time‌wind prevailing that is.
Attached by his ankles he assumes the dive position and holds this straight dive pose as a crane lowers him, at a fair speed equivalent to dive pace, through the car and into the pool. This is all well and good is the breeze is on your side. The slightest gust could cause enough movement to throw you into the side of the vehicle and cause considerable damage‌if not worse. So every possibility is taken into consideration before action is called.
This is Bobby’s view as he looks from the top of the board. An incredible thing to be asked to do and all to promote a new car. The things we do for an honest buck eh?
After half a dozen takes at various speeds the shoot is complete and Bobby can relax.
The finished product is a slick advertising campaign. In adverts like these the car is always the star, but as we can see from the hard work and determination that Bobby had put in he is able to take his fair share of the limelight.
Undeniably at the top of his game Bobby continues to push the envelope when it comes to challenging stunt work. His credits speak for themselves, everyone a box office smash and each outing gives a new generation of movie goer the rush of adrenaline similar to the rush he gets from performing.