She’s a stunt performer, a weapon specialist and an assistant fight coordinator all rolled into one. In other words, Michelle Christa Smith is a daredevil. She has worked in films, such as ‘Supernatural’, ‘The Magicians’, ‘Arrow’, ‘Deadpool’, etc., and many television serials.
However, Michelle’s expertise lies in weapon handling, be it swords, knives, nunchucks, poles, sticks, and even lightsaber of the ‘Star Wars’ fame. In fact, anything that can be used to inflict injury. With these weapons, she performs choreographed fights. Recently, her video displaying her lightsaber skills went viral on the internet, watched by millions. She’s also counted among the world’s best in staff manipulation/bending and baton twirling.
Michelle’s career started with a circus company in Vancouver, Canada. This led her to stunt work and she shifted her focus on working for films and television. Although stunt performance looks like a dream job, it’s quite challenging. The stunt person, not only requires a great amount of energy to accomplish the stunts, but also runs the risk of injury and even death.
Although Michelle has performed as a stunt woman in many successful films and television serials, getting work consistently is always a problem in the entertainment industry. On grow.acrons.com, she shares, “It ebbs and flows. Sometimes there’s lots of work, sometimes there isn’t.” Realizing the inconsistent nature of her job, she started teaching courses and prepared tutorials and training videos to have a secondary source of income. She started showcasing these on her website – On-Line Bad Ass Academy – and there has been no looking back since.
In her training videos, Michelle teaches her students to perform stunts. According to her, this not only helps the learners in mastering the techniques but also comes as an immensely gratifying experience for her. She devotes her time to training almost every day, when not involved in production work.
However, Michelle’s main source of income is still stunt work for films and television, but she also earns from her tutorials and training videos. Just to give an idea of her popularity, she has over 190,000 fans on Instagram alone and many more on the internet.
Michelle Christa Smith