Photo courtesy of Twitter/Marc Webb
Korean American stuntman Ilram Choi will once again be sporting the iconic blue and red spidey suit as he reprises his role as one of actor Andrew Garfield’s stunt doubles in the highly anticipated The Amazing Spiderman 2.
Spending years mastering his skills in taekwondo, for which he has formal training, and also experimenting with judo, jujitsu and capoeira, Choi is no stranger to the difficult sequences of action-packed films.
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Since moving to Los Angeles eight years ago, he has worked on numerous blockbusters like Avatar(2009), Thor: God of Thunder (2011), Ironman 3 (2013) and G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013).
He told KoreAm back in 2012, when the first Spiderman film was released, that it’s a challenge to be an Asian American stuntman working in Hollywood because, if there are “not a lot of Asian actors [in roles], there’s not going to be a lot of Asian stunt guys.” However, the 5-foot-11 Choi says he’s been fortunate to have found steady work, thanks to his height and skill. Of course, in this case, it also helped that Spiderman is a masked superhero.
For Choi, the attraction to stunt work has always been about movement, he told KoreAm. Inspired by the out-of-this world physics of Street Fighter, he wanted to recreate what he saw in the classic Japanese arcade game.
“These were animated characters that were doing unrealistic movements, that defied the laws of physics, and that’s what intrigued me,” he said. “Can [I] do that? How can I manipulate the moves that I have now to do something similar?”
Photo by Yann Bean for KoreAm
Catch Choi defying the laws of physics in The Amazing Spiderman 2, hitting theaters Friday, May 2. Can’t wait that long? Watch Choi in action here:
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Ilram Choi was featured in KoreAm Journal’s August 2012 issue. More of his story can be found here.
