Rémy Julienne, who has died aged 90 after contracting Covid-19, was one of the world’s greatest film stunt drivers and coordinators. He was behind the unforgettable sequence in The Italian Job featuring red, white and blue Mini Coopers speeding away from a daring heist in Turin and went on to mastermind vehicle theatrics in half a dozen James Bond movies.
The 1969 British-flag-flying crime caper’s most memorable scenes began with the getaway cars driving through shopping arcades, then down the steps of the Gran Madre di Dio church while avoiding a wedding party. Later, as the Mini drivers – with stunt doubles – continued to outwit police in cars and on motorcycles, Julienne went beyond his brief and Troy Kennedy Martin’s script during the location shooting.
A large jump between two rooftops was his suggestion, initially rejected by the director, Peter Collinson, and the producer, Michael Deeley, because it sounded so dangerous; but he persisted and used test runs on flat ground to show that the cars could make the distance required. This was typical of his precision in planning stunts – and there was more to come.
“It was decided I had to do three separate jumps in each Mini,” recalled Julienne. “I explained that, as the roof was very wide, we could make the three Minis jump all together. It looked much better as a shot. It was more complicated, but really amazing.”
The 20-minute sequence was completed with the cars crossing a weir on the Po river, navigating a sewer (the interior shot near Coventry), and, in a manoeuvre that Julienne considered his biggest feat, dispatching the Minis, in red, white and blue order – as throughout all the scenes – up a ramp and into the back of a stripped-out coach at speed.
The Italian Job was the first English-language production for Julienne, who was French, and it catapulted him to the top of the list for arranging vehicle acrobatics on screen. Regarding his exploits as “science rather than stunts”, the director John Glen hired him for the 1981 Bond film For Your Eyes Only to coordinate a sequence where Roger Moore’s 007 careers in a yellow Citroën 2CV through Spanish olive groves (actually shot in Corfu), with several rolls and a jump over his pursuers’ car.
Julienne, who doubled for Moore at the wheel, also chose the vehicle’s make and colour. “They asked me the question what the most ridiculous car would be for James Bond to drive and still cause panic with the villains,” he told the 007 historians Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury.
Impressed with the result, Glen also had him draw on his motocross skills – Julienne was French champion in 1957 – to arrange a stunt with Moore on skis escaping down a bobsleigh run from a Yamaha XT500 motorcycle.
Julienne returned for five more Bond films. He beefed up auto-rickshaws in India with Honda 250 engines for a 70mph chase in Octopussy (1983); took his Italian Job experience to A View to a Kill (1985), with Moore commandeering a Renault 11 taxi on the streets of Paris that loses its roof, then back half, as well as a fire engine in San Francisco; and devised the pre-title sequence for The Living Daylights (1987) with Timothy Dalton’s 007 clinging on to the roof of a Land Rover zig-zagging down the Rock of Gibraltar.
For Licence to Kill (1989), he prepared giant Kenworth lorries for a race – including wheelies – across Mexican mountain roads, with Dalton performing a plane jump on to one of them; and in GoldenEye (1995), for a scene set in Monaco but filmed in the south of France, he pitched Pierce Brosnan’s Bond in his Aston Martin DB5 against a Ferrari F355 on hairpin bends.
Remy was born in Cepoy, near the town of Montargis in north-central France, to Lucienne (nee Pavas) and Paul Julienne, a haulage contractor who also ran a cafe. At the age of 12, when the country was under Nazi occupation, he rode a motorcycle, his father’s 100cc Peugeot, for the first time. He also became passionate about the silent film era’s greats such as Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy.
On leaving school, he became a lorry driver, gaining an interest in mechanics, and he was a tank instructor during military service in Germany. A successful motocross career followed, resulting in the stunt arranger Gil Delamare hiring Julienne to double for the French actor Jean Marais riding a bike in the 1964 film Fantômas.
When Delamare died in a horrific filming accident in 1966, Julienne was given the chance to become a stunt coordinator himself and established his L’Equipe team of drivers and mechanics.
He worked on more than a dozen films with Jean-Paul Belmondo – including Le Guignolo (1980), when Belmondo dangled from a helicopter’s rope ladder over the Venice lagoon – and with other French stars such as Yves Montand and Alain Delon, as well as doubling for Charles Bronson in several movies.
Internationally, Julienne arranged stunts for directors such as Sydney Pollack on Bobby Deerfield (1977), Roman Polanski on Frantic (1988), John Woo on Once a Thief (1991), Jackie Chan on Operation Condor (1991), James Ivory on Surviving Picasso (1996) and Ron Howard on The Da Vinci Code (2006).
His work on Fiat commercials included driving over a waterfall in one and through the open doors of a moving freight train in another.
Tragedy struck during the filming of the French movie Taxi 2 (2000), when a car that missed its landing spot following a jump fatally hit a camera operator. Julienne was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and given a suspended prison sentence for 18 months, reduced to six on appeal.
He wrote two autobiographies, Silence … On Casse! (“Silence … we break”, 1978) and Ma Vie en Cascades (My Life in Stunts, 2009).
Julienne is survived by his partner of 10 years, Justine Poulin, and Michel and Dominique, the sons – both stunt performers themselves – of his 1956 marriage to Antonie Pedrocchi, from whom he separated in 1987, as well as a daughter, Diane, from another relationship.
• Rémy Julienne (Rémi Lucien Ernest Julienne), stunt performer and coordinator, born 17 April 1930; died 21 January 2021
