I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once - not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking off the ones I had broken and looking for the ones I hadn't.
I love doing all of my own stunts. Anything. Even if they are telling me, 'No, no, no! You can't do that!' I'll do it. Like crashing my car through the gate, climbing up the building, kicking in a window... I love doing all of that stuff.
I really love Evel Knievel, what he stood for.
I've thought of doing many things in my life, under the influence of life, and I've never actually thought of straddling two carriages while they're moving.
At least 50 times. I've jumped off a building, jumped off a cliff in a car. I've been in bedrooms when women came in with knives and guns.
All his life he [the American] jumps into the train after it has started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once gets left behind, or breaks a leg.
Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?
You can't say you're going to jump the Grand Canyon and then jump some other canyon.
Once Michael gets up there he says, 'Well, maybe I'll just hang up here in the air for a while, just sit back.' Then all of a sudden, he says, 'Well, maybe I'll 360. No I changed my mind. I'll go up on the other side.' He's just incredible.
You have to be in good shape, basically. And then, you have to have a certain craziness, if you're going to do some of the action things.
I have talked to stunt drivers all my life, 32 years of talking to stunt drivers. There's a craziness to them.
I've done smarter things in my life. Once, for example, I threw myself out of a moving car in order to take on a truckload of lycanthropes singlehandedly." ~Harry Dresden
I've always done a lot of stunts in the past, and I sound like I'm tooting my own horn here, but I've always impressed the people I've worked with, and they've let me do more and more.
I've worn a chainmail suit to swim with sharks, glided over Cirencester with a James Bond-style paramotor strapped to my back, eaten hippo steaks and had a bat dive down my bra. And all the while, I had to face the camera and smile.
This is a crazy sport.
Guys like O.J. Simpson and Tony Dorsett can take the ball and run through the line, but I defy them to follow me over a 70-foot cliff or let a horse drag them a few hundred feet. Nobody can beat a stunt man for overall athletic ability.
I was always the guy who jumped off the roof of the garage, who could climb up the facade of a building.
I've done all kinds of cool things as an actor - I've jumped out of helicopters and done some daring stunts and played baseball in a professional stadium, but none of it means anything compared to being somebody’s daddy.
My background was art school, documentary director and surfer with a keen interest in thrilling acts of life threatening stupidity.
Nicholas Temelcoff is famous on the bridge, a daredevil. He is given all the difficult jobs and he takes them. He descends into the air with no fear. He is a solitary. He assembles ropes, brushes the tackle and pulley at his waist, and falls off the bridge like a diver over the edge of a boat.
To get to wear the costume of Evel Knievel, are you kidding me? When I was a kid, I had Superman. I had Spiderman. I had Evel Knievel.
The trapeze was my first love. To me, it's normal. It's all I've ever known.
I can look back now and say, 'Aw, that was a little dumb taking huge bumps onto concrete before a couple of hundred fans,' but if it wasn't for that attitude and that type of work ethic, I never would have gotten to WWE.
I went through a phase where I thought it was really funny to make pratfalls in very crowded places. I jumped out of a moving car once, for a laugh. That was a mistake.
You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across?
