Leaping from buildings, driving cars off cliffs and blowing up boats – it’s all in a day’s work for stuntman and stunt coordinator Roy Scammell, whose talk about his career in films such as For Your Eyes Only, A Clockwork Orange, Alien and The Italian Job will be one of the highlights of the inaugural St Albans Film Festival next weekend.

“I’m very much looking forward to the festival,” says the 80-year-old from Bricket Wood, “it will be a great experience for young filmmakers from the area. I’ll be at quite a few of the events, as well as my own.”

Roy will be talking film fans through the movies he has featured in and arranged stunts for, showing clips of his work and hosting a Q&A session.

Roy started out as a professional ice skater in the 1940s, living in Wembley, playing ice hockey and appearing in the Holiday on Ice shows from the age of 16. He got an agent who recognised his physical talent – he was also a gymnast – and he started getting roles doing stunts in various plays, films and TV shows, including Oliver! and, later, Starlight Express.

But it is Roy’s work in Hollywood blockbusters that will be of most interest to St Albans Film Festival audiences.

“I particularly liked doing For Your Eyes Only,” says Roy, “we shot that in Corfu. We were getting blown up in boats and we had to charge round corners and drive cars off cliffs.”

During his time, Roy got to work with some of the biggest names in the business – Michael Caine in The Italian Job, Lee Marvin and Telly Savalas in The Dirty Dozen, Tony Curtis in Monte Carlo or Bust (“That was more risky than the driving in The Italian Job”), and Kirk Douglas and Frank Sinatra in Cast a Giant Shadow.

“I was doubling for Kurt Douglas, getting blown up in jeeps, and Frank Sinatra was doing a cameo and I had to do a parachute jump out of his plane that was shot up, over the desert. All the actors were in the studio, about a quarter of a mile away, and I landed after this jump and saw somebody coming over to me and it was Frank. He said, ‘Great job, kid, great job’. That was wonderful, I’d always loved him, loved his voice.

“Most actors are really nice people generally,” continues Roy, who still choreographs stunts and is currently working on his own film script. “Lee Marvin was a lovely person to work with, very malleable and a great war hero himself in real life, which I admired.”

Pertinently for St Albans, Roy will also be talking about his work on A Clockwork Orange, directed by former resident Stanley Kubrick. “He was an incredible director,” remembers Roy. “He was a perfectionist, he really knew his stuff and he knew what he wanted. But in the fight sequences he was happy to hand it over to me, the stunt coordinator – once he saw you were doing a good job, he let you get on with it.”

Roy went on to work on Barry Lyndon and Full Metal Jacket with Kubrick.

As well as men, Roy sometimes found himself doubling for female stars. If you watch the 1967 version of Casino Royale, you’ll see that it isn’t Deborah Kerr climbing down the outside of a castle wall in her nightgown and Wellington boots, but Roy. “That was a funny night,” Roy laughs, “but it was bloody cold in that nightdress!”

  • Roy Scammell: Stuntman Extraordinaire is at the Hare & Hounds, Sopwell Lane, St Albans on Friday, March 8, at 6pm. Details: www.stalbansfilmfestival.com