Charlize Theron’s ‘Atomic Blonde’ Stunts Were ’99 Percent Her’ (Exclusive)

Charlize Theron is the rare movie star who does the vast majority of her own stunts, according to David Leitch. 

The director of 2017’s box office hit Atomic Blonde, starring the Oscar-winning actress, 48, as a top-level spy, tells PEOPLE that there was exceedingly little trickery in her epic fight scenes. And considering Leitch got his start as a double for the likes of Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, he knows exactly how rare that is. 

“That stairwell fight that we created, that’s 99 percent her,” says the 48-year-old filmmaker behind The Fall Guy (in theaters now). “Except for a couple places where we threw [stunt coordinator] Monique Ganderton down the stairs.”

That particular fight, one of the spy thriller’s more mind-boggling sequences, appears to be a single 10-minute-long take in which Theron hits, kicks and stabs her way up a building’s staircase, back down and then out onto the street, hijacking a police car and shooting yet more assailants. As Variety reported upon the movie’s release, the shot is actually almost 40 takes edited painstakingly together. 

Theron trained in martial arts for six weeks prior to filming, stunt coordinator Sam Hargrave told PEOPLE at the time.

“She showed that she could do 10, 15, 20, 30 moves in succession without needing to cut or reset… We were like, ‘Wow, this is special. This is unique. We need to take advantage of this.’ ”

“It’s really Charlize learning all that choreography, taking those hits,” recalls Leitch almost seven years later.

While on most movie sets, stunt professionals are there to perform the most violent or dangerous moves, there are stars like Theron who work with the pros on choreographing, rehearsing and ensuring safety on set. “There are great actors that have the aptitude,” he says, “and the goal is to have the stunt team train them to be the best action people they can be.”

That’s true of his new movie The Fall Guy, a loving homage to cinema’s stunt community loosely based on Lee Majors’ 1980s TV series of the same name. Starring Ryan Gosling as a stunt man and Emily Blunt as his director, it was ambitious enough to put actors, doubles and stunt coordinators through their paces. 

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Gosling, 43, “was the only person that Kelly and I thought of for this role,” Leitch tells PEOPLE of his leading man, who participated in many of the movie’s riskiest stunts. “He has this connectability, this relatability, but he also has that movie star charm and sex appeal.”

Leitch’s hope with The Fall Guy was to “create something where he could use all of those skills, his romantic lead skills and his action skills that he did with The Gray Man and his comedy skills from Nice Guys, and we could make something that was really unique and special.”

But Gosling is one of “quite a few” A-listers who brought both acting and action skills to Leitch’s movies. Jason Statham, who starred in 2019’s Hobbs & Shaw, “came from competitive diving,” he points out. “He’s an incredible athlete. He can do so much.”

The same goes for Pitt, who Leitch would go on to direct in 2022’s Bullet Train after getting his start as the leading man’s stunt double on Fight Club, The Mexican and more.

“I think Brad just has a natural athletic ability. The movies I did with him, it was really more like I spent more of the time training and rehearsing the stunts to show him what to do than really doing that stunt.”

And 2014’s John Wick, which Leitch co-directed with Chad Stahelski, starred one of the best action actors around in Leitch’s opinion. Keanu Reeves, he says, “Does it all. He’s insane.”

In the world of high-octane stunts, “insane” is a compliment. 

The Fall Guy, written by Drew Pearce and costarring Winston Duke, Hannah Waddingham, Stephanie Hsu and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is in theaters now.