{"id":774435,"date":"2026-09-18T06:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T06:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774435\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T06:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T06:38:15","slug":"zoe-bell-on-tarantino-xena-and-getting-a-lifetime-honor-at-oldenburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774435\/","title":{"rendered":"Zo\u00eb Bell on Tarantino, Xena, and Getting a Lifetime Honor at Oldenburg"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tZo\u00eb Bell has spent the better part of 25 years being other people \u2014 at speed, on fire and 20-odd stories above the ground. She has been Xena. She has been Uma Thurman<\/a>\u2019s Bride. She has been Sharon Stone falling 23 stories onto an airbag \u201cthe size of a stamp.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe has also had a career like no other: a girl from a small island off a small country, with no film industry connections, who vaulted into Hollywood; a woman making her way through a male-dominated profession that has only just begun to get its due; a performer who became a stunt double, then an actor, producer, coordinator and now, at the point where many stunt careers begin winding down, a director.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut for the past few years, Bell\u2019s life has been less about motion than stillness. She has been living in Colorado, not Los Angeles, in a house she bought almost impulsively before the world shut down.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI went through some stuff right before the lockdown and bought a house on a whim,\u201d she says. \u201cThe thought of owning something outside of L.A. filled me with peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe plan was to stay two weeks, then leave for Vancouver for five months on a movie. Instead, COVID hit. The two weeks became years. In hindsight, Bell can now see what she could not fully name at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve sort of been in some form of hiding,\u201d she says. \u201cHiding and healing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich is why the Oldenburg Film Festival\u2019s career tribute arrives at a strange and almost perfectly timed moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tGermany\u2019s leading indie fest has long made a specialty of outsiders and oddballs \u2014 artists who arrived without pedigree, training programs or an obvious industry slot and built the career anyway. Bell qualifies on every count.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer first instinct, characteristically, was to turn the honor down.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t feel deserving of this at all,\u201d she told Oldenburg festival director Torsten Neumann when he reached out. Then he sent an email laying out what he intended to celebrate. Bell read it back to herself. \u201cI was like, wow, I guess I have had kind of quite a great [career]. So I said, \u2018Okay, fuck, I\u2019m going to step into that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tZo\u00eb Bell got her start as the stunt double for Lucy Lawless<\/a> in \u2018Xena: Warrior Princess<\/a>\u2018<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of the Oldenburg Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\tBell grew up on Waiheke Island, a ferry ride from Auckland, the daughter of two parents in the medical field. Hollywood stunt work was not on the careers-advisor list.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere wasn\u2019t an awareness of stunts being a realistic career,\u201d she says. \u201cIt just wasn\u2019t part of my reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut kinetic action was. From age two, Bell was a trampoline obsessive \u2014 \u201cit was like my best friend until my brother was born\u201d \u2014 climbing trees, doing gymnastics, watching diving, ice skating, anything that looked like flight. \u201cI was actually convinced, when I was little, that if I put my mind to it, got my head just right, I could literally fly,\u201d she says. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ve always just been chasing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe left school good at three things: English, photography and PE. \u201cThere\u2019s no world I could imagine where those three things could apex into a career,\u201d she says. She got a job at a Waiheke vineyard and started taekwondo \u201cbecause I liked the idea of throwing my legs around.\u201d Staying late to watch the black belts train, she discovered some of them were stunt men.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor the first time in my life, I was smitten with something that could be a career. I felt like, holy shit, I could be really useful in that role.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen fate intervened. A man was admitted into her father\u2019s surgery with a concussion. He was a stuntman. Bell\u2019s dad came home with a phone number.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe said: \u2018I\u2019m sick of hearing you bleat on about it [becoming a stuntwoman]\u2019,\u201d Bell recalls. He said: \u201c\u2018There\u2019s two options: either you wake up with exactly the life you\u2019ve got now, or you wake up a stunt woman. But if you don\u2019t make the phone call, becoming a stunt woman isn\u2019t an option.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe made the call. And landed her first gig: A TV pilot called Amazon High from Renaissance Pictures, the indie production outfit set up Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell that was busy churning out episodes of Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess. Amazon High never got the green light to series, but Bell started getting work on the main shows.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a while she was a day player \u2014 \u201cthey\u2019d call me when they needed a villager to fall off a roof, or an extra soldier.\u201d Then Xena lost its lead stunt double. Bell had the height, the size and, as she says \u201cthe right combination of gymnastics and martial arts\u201d to double Lucy Lawless. She was still a teenager. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI can remember going home, being like, \u2018Mom, Dad, I\u2019m going to be Xena,\u2019\u201d Bell says. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Xena set became her film school. \u201cI call it my Xena-versity,\u201d she says. Wirework entered her nervous system. Fight choreography came at industrial speed. One of her first stunts in the Xena costume \u2014 a jerk-back through breakaway furniture \u2014 became something she jokes she would later do \u201c1,700 times a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the most important lessons came from watching Lucy Lawless. \u201cThe way she\u2019d be on set profoundly informed how I wanted to be on set,\u201d Bell says. \u201cWith Lucy there was never any separation from the crew, there was no hiding in the trailer. She knew that, when you\u2019re the star, when you\u2019re in 90 percent of the shots, the energy you bring to set affects everybody\u2019s day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBell\u2019s next jump was to Hollywood. Her trampoline was Quentin Tarantino<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tBell\u2019s first meeting with him is captured on film, in Amanda Micheli\u2019s documentary Double Dare, a portrait of Bell and legendary stuntwoman Jeannie Epper, the double to Lynda Carter\u2019s Wonder Woman. The doc brought Bell to Los Angeles, where she wound up at a Kill Bill<\/a> audition. She assumed she had no chance of landing it. \u201cBut I thought: the boys will definitely buy me beers when I go home because I auditioned for a Tarantino movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe walked into the room, saw Kill Bill co-star Daryl Hannah and [Uma Thurman\u2019s then husband] Ethan Hawke on exercise bikes. \u201cI was completely star stuck, I thought: that\u2019s Splash, that\u2019s Reality Bites\u201c<\/p>\n

\n\tShe nailed the audition. Tarantino was impressed by how she would repeat a stunt again and again until she landed it \u2014 so Bell was off to China to shoot Kill Bill Vol.1 and Kill Bill Volume 2 back to back.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tUma Thurman, Zo\u00eb Bell on the set of \u2018Kill Bill\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of the Oldenburg Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\tOn set, Tarantino treated her like actor, not a stuntwoman. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs far as he\u2019s concerned, anything in front of the lens is telling the story,\u201d Bell says. \u201cSo I wasn\u2019t the Bride stunt double. I was a facet of the Bride.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIn the House of Blue Leaves fight sequence in Kill Bill Vol. 1, Bell, as Thurman\u2019s The Bride has to run full speed up a banister, holding a samurai sword, to attack O-Ren [Lucy Liu]. Bell technically nailed the run, but Tarantino pulled her aside. \u201cHe asked: \u2018What\u2019s your motivation?\u2019,\u201d she recalls, \u201cwhich was like what we stunt people would say as a joke.\u201d But Tarantino was serious. She answered: \u201c\u2018I want to get to the next floor.’\u201d Quentin pushed: \u201cWhat\u2019s up there? O-Ren. Why do you want to get to O-Ren? I want to kill her. But Why?’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNow I\u2019m getting goosebumps just remembering,\u201d Bell says. \u201cI said to Quentin: \u2018Because she fucked up my life, and I want to slaughter everybody.\u2019 And he was like, \u2018Okay, we\u2019re ready to go. Can we roll cameras, please?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen came Death Proof. Tarantino told her he was writing a movie about a man who kills women with his car, and that he wanted Bell and Monica Staggs, Hannah\u2019s Kill Bill double, in the film. They assumed they\u2019d be background girls in a bar.<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead Bell got a lead role, playing Zo\u00eb Bell. Tarantino wrote the role for her. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was terrified,\u201d she says. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be the person that screws up a Tarantino film. And I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know if I can act.\u2019\u201d Tarantino\u2019s direction was simple: learn the lines inside out and backwards, take no acting classes. \u201cI know what I want from you, and I know how to get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBell said it was a big adjustment, learning to look at the lens, not away from it \u2014 \u201cI was fighting all my instincts to hide my face,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was the first time I felt like the lens could see me, not just my physical performance. The camera was looking into Zo\u00eb. That was definitely the most terrifying thing.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Zoe Bell<\/a>, Tracie Thoms, Rosario Dawson and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in \u2018Death Proof\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of the Oldenburg Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\tCompared to that, being strapped to the hood of a Dodge Challenger doing 90 mph was a joy. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat stunt was a real highlight, because it was the perfect example of what you get when you get the right team, the right level of experience and that sort of unspoken communication \u2014 it becomes like dancing,\u201d she recalls. \u201c[Stuntwoman] Tracie Dashnaw was driving and I was just thinking: how far can I push it? The only time I got scared, actually, was when we were driving the back. Someone else took the wheel and was driving normally. He hit the brakes, didn\u2019t feather the brakes like Tracie would, and I nearly flew off, had to catch myself on the edge of the bonnet. I felt: Oh shit! What we\u2019re doing is dangerous! We were going 10 miles an hour, and we\u2019ve been going 90, but that was the first time I felt it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBell draws a line between genuine fear and performance anxiety. Genuine fear comes early, when she hears what the stunt is. By the time the camera rolls, she wants to have metabolized it into work.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Catwoman, prepping for a 23-story fall, she stepped onto the roof and peeked down at the airbag below. \u201cIt was like the size of a stamp,\u201d she says. \u201cI remember thinking, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s not going to save me. That\u2019s just to make other people feel better.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo she asked to be clipped in and sat on the edge, in her memory, for 45 minutes to an hour. \u201cJust to strip the novelty, the fear out of it. So the height is no longer novel. And therefore, not scary anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tActing, oddly, was harder. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cStunts appealed so much because I got to perform without having to access all that heady stuff,\u201d she says. \u201cThen you get into acting, and it\u2019s like, oh, now I have to expose all those emotions. I have to be feminine. I have to be vulnerable. I have to be able to be sexual. That\u2019s scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBell put that exposure to the test on Josh C. Waller\u2019s Raze, the 2013 low-budget action movie she produced and starred in, an underground fight picture that shot 19 action sequences in 30 days. Bell was in nearly every frame, producing, performing and helping shape the fights on almost no sleep.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt remains one of the projects she is proudest of, not because it was easy but because it forced her to move beyond the body-as-instrument logic of stunt work.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cActing is not easy \u2014 breaking down a script and figuring out where your character starts and finishes,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a very heady experience, and I\u2019m a heady person.\u201d Raze, she says, was the first time she recognized \u201cI had a voice, and I could infuse it further up the chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHollywood has changed since Bell arrived. More roles are written for women in action. More women coordinate stunts. And the Academy has finally created a category for stunt design, with the first Oscar to be awarded next year. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re finally being recognized as a department that speaks to the storytelling of film and TV,\u201d she says, approvingly, \u201cbecause [we] don\u2019t just turn up and tick boxes. It is an art. It\u2019s not just a sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tZo\u00eb Ball was the stunt coordinator on Quentin Tarantino\u2019s \u2018Once Upon a Time in\u2026Hollywood.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of the Oldenburg Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\tBell\u2019s Oscar stunt reel would include, as a performer, her Death Proof car stunt and, as a stunt coordinator, the \u201cNazi burn flamethrower scene\u201d in Once Upon a Time\u2026In Hollywood, a sequence in a mock WW2 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio\u2019s character, Rick Dalton, in which he scorches a row of SS men.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe had eight performers burning, with two safeties each, so eight stations and a flamethrower blasting direct heat,\u201d Bell recalls. \u201cIt was so big and so hot. When we\u2019d yell cut and everyone\u2019s running in with the extinguishers, I\u2019m like, \u2018is everyone okay?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe high was different from performing. \u201cWhen I do something well as a performer, I tend to look for other people to be proud of what I did,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I\u2019m coordinating or directing, I get to be the one being proud of other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBell says her ideal on-camera job remains \u201cto be an actor who\u2019s performing her own stunts.\u201d But she\u2019s discovered a new passion: Directing. She has gotten behind the camera for a short film campaign for New Zealand\u2019s Arnott\u2019s Biscuits (Taika Waititi hired her), and directed a campaign for The Wilderness Society, starring Joel Egerton, Rosario Dawson and Cate Blanchett. After shooting her first commercial, Bell says she walked off set thinking: \u201cGod, I feel really useful in this role. That\u2019s the first time I felt that since discovering stunts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen life intervened.<\/p>\n

\n\tAround the midpoint of shooting Once Upon a Time in Hollywood<\/a> and in the 18 months that followed, Bell says she went through a series of \u201cfoundationally shaking experiences.\u201d Her partner nearly died. Her mother died. She became pregnant, lost the baby and lost the ability to have children.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt threw me in a way that \u2014 look, I\u2019ve been through some weird stuff, and I\u2019ve been through some sad stuff, but I\u2019ve never not been able to cope,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd not being able to cope was terrifying. That was profoundly unsettling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen came COVID. Then the strikes. Then Colorado.<\/p>\n

\n\tBell did not disappear. She coordinated reshoots on Thor: Love and Thunder, coordinated and second-unit directed Time Bandits, developed scripts and kept working. But she was doing it, she can see now, from a protected distance. \u201cI was kind of faking it from afar so I could stay safe,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Colorado house became the place where she stopped moving long enough to understand what had happened. \u201cI didn\u2019t consciously take a break,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I look back now and I think I needed that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the start of this year, Bell said something out loud to her husband: \u201cI need to get back in the mix. I need to actually start getting back in the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen Oldenburg called.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tribute and the timing \u2014 Bell is in pre-production for Free Fall, a thriller planned as her feature debut as a director \u2014 felt perfect.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI feel really like on the precipice of the next thing,\u201d Bell says. \u201cThis is round two. Here we go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zo\u00eb Bell has spent the better part of 25 years being other people \u2014 at speed, on fire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,718,78701,255466,255467,255468,153828,33395,56,52555,54,55,255469,255470],"class_list":["post-774435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-kill-bill","tag-lucy-lawless","tag-oldenburg-2026","tag-oldenburg-international-film-festival","tag-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood","tag-quentin-tarantino","tag-uk","tag-uma-thurman","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-xena-warrior-princess","tag-zoe-bell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}