LE CATEAU-CAMBRESIS (France) • Ms Valeriane Michelini trained as a dancer before opting to tap the growing demand for stuntwomen and a career of jumping out of helicopters, leaping from buildings and brawling.

She is one of a growing number of women passing through the Campus Univers Cascade (CUC), which bills itself as the world's biggest stunt school, and is looking to break into European cinema and Hollywood as a stunt double.

"I'm used to thriving in a graceful and feminine world," the 29-year-old said between rounds of simulated fights. "And now, I'm in quite the opposite."

Nearly a third of CUC's current intake are women. Demand for female superheroes in film is growing - and with the rise of online streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney Plus, 24-year-old student Marine Dolle believes she will be a precious commodity on the job market.

"It's choreographed, it's calculated, it's technical," she said of the challenges of safely executing dangerous stunts.

Sometimes, the women students do not even finish the course before being snapped up by studios on either side of the Atlantic.

Keeping talent in France is proving difficult, said the school's parkour trainer Malik Diouf. "There's really a small pool of stuntwomen... As soon as they have the slightest skills, they leave directly to work with the Americans, the English or the rest of the world."

It was once commonplace for studios to use stuntmen in wigs instead of female doubles, a practice known as wigging.

In a landmark lawsuit in 2018, United States stuntwoman Deven MacNair sued a production company and Hollywood's acting union over dressing up a male double rather than hiring a woman.

CUC director Lucas Dollfus said attitudes are evolving: "We don't need wigs anymore. The women are bad-a** in any case."

REUTERS