Little Kiran is a big hit in Hollywood

Hobbit Kiran Shah (right) strikes a pose with his scale double Frodo Baggins for actor Elijah Wood in the Lord of the Rings which was filmed in New Zealand.

When it comes to death-defying action on the screen, it is hard to hold back the pint-sized stuntman Kiran Shah.

The Kenyan-born 58-year-old actor and performer from London has won the hearts of millions of Hollywood film-buffs with his hair-raising action in block-busters and epic films such as the Lord of Rings, The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Little Kiran — he is four-foot one-inch — as he is fondly known, is also the darling of millions of children around the world for his roles in Superman One and Two, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Dark Crystal, Star Wars Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, Braveheart and Titanic.

His latest film, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, was released in December to rave reviews.

His long list of successes includes An Unexpected Journey, The Lion and The Witch and The Wardrobe where he played the character Ginarrbrik, and The White Witch’s sleigh driver.

His biggest films so far have been The Lord of The Rings Trilogy where he was a scale and stunt double for the Hobbits.

Kiran has worked with legendary directors such as Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, George Lucas, Mel Gibson, Jim Hansen and stars like Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise among others.

Few actors can claim this distinction!

 Diagnose the problem

Kiran was born in September 1956 in Ngara in Nairobi.

From a very young age, he knew that he was different from other children because he was smaller than them and at nine he had stopped growing.

His parents consulted doctors in Nairobi but they could not diagnose the problem.

As a child, he started imitating his uncle’s mannerisms much to the amusement of his friends without realising he was building a future career. After watching films in various Nairobi movie theatres, he wanted to become an actor but Kenya did not have a film industry.

In 1967, when he was eleven, his family relocated to India due to his father’s ill health.

Kiran missed Kenya but adjusted to his new life which was different. He nearly made it to Bollywood but his father’s health worsened.

The family left India to join his brother in London where his father’s health improved.

Kiran started schooling but was still keen to work in films.

At school, his attention was drawn to an advertisement in Time Out for The Red Buddha Theatre Company which was seeking people on and off stage.

He got through an audition and was given the part of a main character, a mime clown.

He toured Italy for three months with the theatre company and later returned to school and joined mime and mask classes. After completing his secondary education, he went into experimental theatre to learn more about mime, movement and masks.

He worked in experimental theatre for four years after which he decided to try his luck in films.

He auditioned for the part of the inside man R2D2 for the film Star Wars and was chosen to replace the fellow dwarf British actor Kenny Baker who had rejected the role but later returned and reclaimed the part he lost out to Kiran.

This did not dishearten Kiran. A couple of months later he was chosen to stand-in for a Chinese girl in a film called Candleshoe.

 Trained by experts

While working on this, the well-known Hollywood stunt coordinator Bob Anderson asked Kiran to do stunts for his character.

His stunt life took off from here and he was trained by various stunt experts including Vic Armstrong, Paul Weston and Danny Powell.

Kiran has set himself on fire, skidded with a motorcycle, jumped off a bridge, jumped off a horse among many stunts.

“I have broken my legs, toes, nose, hands, fingers, and dislocated my shoulders,” he says.

“I sustained a severe back injury during the Lord of the Rings while rehearsing a scene where I was fighting and fell off a horse!

When I realised the horse had bolted, I was in the air. I fell and my back cracked.”

Was it was worth risking his life doing stunts? “Actually, not many people know that stuntmen are not dare-devils. We are trained to carry out stunts as safely as possible.

All the stunts we perform — the high falls, motorbike stunts and setting ourselves on fire — are done with almost 99 per cent precaution and just one percent risk. But yes, one can get addicted to the adrenaline rush!”

Kiran, however, cautions people who watch dare-devil stunts on the screen not to imitate these at home unless they are professionally trained.

Producer John Dark spotted Kiran at Pinewood Studios and invited him to meet director Kevin O’ Connor for their fantasy-adventure film The People That Time Forgot, a sequel to The Land That Time Forgot. That meeting propelled him into acting. Kiran returned to New Zealand in 2011 working on The Hobbit trilogy. He played the character of a Goblin called Scribe. He was also the Scale double for Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and performed stunts for the various children.

After winning acclaim in Hollywood, Bollywood came knocking on Kiran’s doors.

Amitabh Bachchan, the Bollywood icon was looking for someone to play the role of his character Auro, the five two seven-year-old son of Vidya Balan in the acclaimed blockbuster Paa.

“They wanted an old man with a lot of makeup on to play the role of Amitabh Bachchan as a young boy. When Amitabh heard my name, he acknowledged it and asked if I could play the role. In that movie, my scenes did not require any dialogue,” he told interviewer Hussein Jiva. In 2003, the Guinness Book of Records recognised Kiran as the shortest professional stuntman currently working in films.

In 2010, he gained further acclaim as the shortest wing walker when he was strapped to the wing of a 1940s Boeing Spearman biplane flying 300 metres high and at the speed of 120 miles per hour.

The plight of small people is close to Kiran’s heart. He takes special interest in the people who suffer from dwarfism. He returned to Nairobi after 40 years to support and help launch The Association of People with Dwarfism.

The boy from Ngara has proved that height is no bar to reach the top in Hollywood.