You are watching a film in which two men are having a fight. They hit one another hard. At the start they only fight with their fists. But soon they begin hitting one another over the heads with chairs. And so it goes on until one of the men crashes (撞击) through a window and falls thirty feet to the ground below. He is dead！Of course he isn't really dead. With any luck he isn't even hurt. Why? Because the men who fall out of high windows or jump from fast moving trains, who crash cars of even catch fire, are professionals. They do this for a living. These men are called stuntmen. That is to say, they perform tricks.There are two sides to their work. They actually do most of the things you see on the screen. For example, they fall from a high building. However, they do not fall on to hard ground but on to empty cardboard boxes covered with a mattress (床垫). Again, when they hit one another with chairs, the chairs are made of soft wood and when they crash through windows, the glass is made of sugar!But although their work depends on trick of this sort, it also requires a high degree of skill and training. Often a stuntman' s success depends on careful timing. For example, when he is "blown up" in a battle scene, he has to jump out of the way of the explosion just at the right moment.
Naturally stuntmen are well paid for their work, but they lead dangerous lives. They often get seriously injured, and sometimes killed. A Norwegian stuntman, for example, skied over the edge of a cliff (悬崖) a thousand feet high. His parachute (降落伞) failed to open, and he was killed. In spite of all the risks, this is no longer a profession for men only. Men no longer dress up as women when actresses have to perform some dangerous action. For nowadays there are stuntgirls tool

你在看一部两个男人打斗的电影。他们互相打的很厉害。刚开始，他们还只是以拳相向，但后来他们就用椅子打对方的头。直到其中一个撞到窗户，摔出30米远，才得意告终。他死了！当然他还没死。走运的是，他还毫发无损。为什么？因为那种从高处窗户跳下或从高速列车上跳下的人，甚至还撞车、身上着火，都是专业人员。他们以此为生。这种职业就叫特技演员。也就是说，他们表演的是假象。他们做两方面的工作。实际上，他们做的大多和我们在荧屏看到的一样。比如，他们从高楼掉下。然而，他们不是摔在硬邦邦的地上，而是盖着床垫的空纸板箱上。再次，当他们用椅子打人的时候，椅子都是用软木做的。当他们撞出窗时，窗是用糖做的！虽然他们的工作靠的是这种小把戏，但还是需要高水平的技巧和训练的。特技演员的成功常常取决于精确的时间选择。比如，当在战争场面中爆炸时，他就要在恰当的时间跳出爆炸点。很自然，他们的工资很高，但他们过着危险的生活。他们经常受重伤，有时甚至会死。比如，一个挪威的特技演员，在一个一千 英尺高的悬崖上滑雪，他的降落伞没能打开，他就摔死了。尽管有这些危险，对人来说也不再是个职业。当女演员必须完成危险的动作时，男演员不用再打扮成女的了。因为如今已经有女特技演员了