4. Alyson Hannigan in Buffy
It’s been a while since we’ve seen any of these lovely ladies, hasn’t it, Buffy fans? On the Joss Whedon vampire hunter show Buffy, Alyson Hannigan played Buffy’s dear friend, Willow. As the show went on, Willow got herself into more and more trouble (as any successful protagonist’s friends would). When shooting one episode, in particular, Alyson Hannigan got to hang out with not only her regular stunt double but also her stunt double — and her vampire alter-ego and her stunt double! What a weird coffee break that must have been…
But obviously, there were a lot of stunt doubles hanging around on the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The action-packed show had Sarah Michelle Gellar fighting in just about every episode and plenty of cast members came and went to be her opponents though Willow wasn’t often the source of such drama, so it was quite odd to see Alyson hanging out with that many Doppelgangers!
5. Tom Hardy and Christian Bale in The Dark Knight Rises
Here are two badass guys that both insist on doing as much work as possible when they’re cast in films. Christian Bale has been known to make dramatic shifts in weight and personality for his roles, just as he did when he dropped below one hundred pounds for The Machinist or when his temperament shifted on the set of Terminator Salvation. Tom Hardy has also been known to dedicate his entire body to each of his roles, whether that role is Bronson, Bane, or Fitzgerald. So when you get the two together and find them a pair of stunt doubles, you know they aren’t going to give up their fights easily. In this scene alone of Dark Knight Rises, we can see Tom and Christian giving tips to the professional stuntmen as they gear up to do the quick-punches sequence in which Batman breaks Bane’s mask and Bane proceeds to punch a chunk out of a marble column.
6. All Of The Dwarves in The Hobbit
That’s right: ALL OF THE DWARVES! Ever wonder how they managed to do all of the editing work, making dwarves seem smaller than hobbits, which are way smaller than wizards but only kind of smaller than humans? It’s a lot of scaling to be thought about! So they had the cast of dwarves that we all know and love (you know, Richard Armitage, Ken Stott, Graham McTavish, etc.) and then there was the second cast of dwarves that were… well, dwarf-sized. This second cast was the one you would see running about when the scale was much more important, such as when they’re in Lake Town or when they’re fleeing battle from Uruk-Hai monsters. A lot of instances, though, editors had to work hard to shrink down the scale of the normal cast as they did in the Lord of the Rings films, which takes a lot of time with green screens and editing software.