Hong Kong — Jason Li Took His First Stunt Job Through an Explosion With No Pads, and an Eight-Metre Cliff Jump at Sundown

• Jason Li is a Hong Kong stunt actor and stunt double whose credits include "The Meg" and "Transformers."
• He says his first real stunt job put him through an explosion on concrete with no protective gear.
• He now wants to move behind the camera into stunt coordinating, action design and action camera work.

Posted: October 22, 2026

Jason Li has laid out, in his own words, how a Hong Kong stunt career gets built and what it costs to stay in it. His first real stunt job was Blackhat, shot in Hong Kong: the villain drags him into a tunnel, sets a trap and blows the pair of them up. Li went into the gag with no protective gear. He hit the ground as safely as he could, caught the smell of burning gunpowder, and says that was the moment the difference between concrete and a gym mat stopped being theoretical.

What he brings to the work is unusual for the department. Li studied biology and sports medicine, and he approaches each gag through biomechanics and force management — reading the visual grip of the shot against what the body will absorb. Where impact can't be avoided, his method is to control it and spread the force rather than take it in one place. The martial arts underneath that are Chinese Wushu, specifically Taolu, with both empty hands and weapons, and then Tae Kwon Do — disciplines he chose for the sustained full-body movement that reads on camera in the wide shots and long takes Hong Kong action cinema is built on.

On doubling, Li is specific about the study involved. He watches the tilt of the head, the dominant hand, the posture, the gait, and the way an actor's movement shifts with emotion, then tells the actor where he is putting himself so the cut between them holds. His point is that the handoff is a two-way piece of communication, not something the double solves alone.

The closest call he names was not a feature. On a TVB series, after a full day of wire work and fights in heavy period costume, he was asked at short notice to make an eight-metre cliff jump into a pile of boxes. The landing area was uneven with jagged rocks under it, the sun was going down and the crew was chasing the shot. He agreed on instinct, jumped, and walked away. His framing of it is that stunts are safe when they are planned and rehearsed — and that this one was neither.

Li is candid that the body sets the clock. He expects to keep performing while it holds up, and is increasingly drawn to stunt coordinating, action design and action camera work as the next stage. On the anonymity: if the audience notices him, he says, he has not done his job.

Source: Prestige Hong Kong — Jason Li on Life as the Faceless Hero Behind the Action

Learn more on IMDb: Jason Li · The Meg (2018)