Vic Armstrong, one of Hollywood’s most seasoned stuntmen, has jumped on a Nazi tank as Indiana Jones and soared through the sky as Superman.

He’s also had an up-close look at the changes CGI and other modern technology have brought to Hollywood and how it’s affected the rough-and-tumble role of the daredevils who crash cars, leap from tall buildings and get set on fire, all for the sake of cinematic thrills.

“With budgets the way they are, and technology, we can have less people doing much more,” Armstrong told Wired.com. “And we can have the actors being far more involved, like Pierce Brosnan driving a boat down a crowded river or Tom Cruise jumping off the building. We can just be more nimble these days.”

Armstrong, dubbed the “world’s most prolific stuntman” by the Guinness Book of World Records, rewinds an incredible career in his new memoir, The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman: My Life as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Superman and Other Movie Heroes. It details his 40-plus years performing and directing stunt work. The stories and images (sampled in the gallery above) are pretty amazing.

In addition to his work as a stuntman on those action classics, Armstrong has directed stunts on modern flicks like Mission: Impossible 3, The Green Hornet, The Amazing Spider-Man and Thor.

Wired.com caught up with Armstrong by phone from his Southern California home to talk down-and-dirty Hollywood history and the future of stunts in the CGI era.

Wired.com: Looking back on all the stunts over your career, were there stunts where you thought you might not make it out of the shoot?

Vic Armstrong: [laughs] Oh, not really. Everyone likes to look at the dramatic side of stunts, but everything’s worked out and calculated. You’re more worried about screwing up and having to do it all over.

Wired.com: The famous stunt in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where you jump off a ledge from a galloping horse onto a moving tank [video above]: I read how you set up that jump — the preparation, how you set up the rocks to guide the horse. You say you’re not worried at all, but when it comes down to it, you’re jumping off a cliff onto a moving tank. It’s just clockwork?

Armstrong: I mean you’ve got nerves and everything else, but it’s seriously just the worry of failure. There is pressure with 200 people and a schedule to keep up. You do dry runs, but you can’t really rehearse. Eventually it’s, “OK, let’s go for it.” You just pray you don’t screw up, which I nearly did on the first take, but that’s just the way it goes.

Wired.com: And if you do screw up? Just do it again?

Armstrong: Absolutely. I screwed up a few of those stunts in Indiana Jones and ended up looking like Wile E. Coyote running through the air. But you just land, say, “I know what went wrong. Let’s set up and do it again.”

Wired.com: In the book, you and Harrison Ford had an interchange where you pull him aside and say more or less, “Quit doing all your stunts, man. We’re paid per stunt. So you’re taking food out of my mouth each time you do your own,” and he’s shocked and apologizes because he didn’t know. But in today’s day and age, all that must be worked out beforehand, right?

Armstrong: Oh yeah. Putting on my other hat as stunt coordinator, you have to look and say, “No way do we want Harrison or whoever risking his neck here or here.” You sort all that out beforehand.

Wired.com: You’ve had an impressive career trajectory, from jumping off horses in the desert to now doing the stunt direction in Thor. With so much of today’s stunts being done in green rooms, is that old game of stunts a fading art?

Armstrong: I think it’s still very much alive — even making a resurgence. I’ve just finished Spider-Man in New York and the advent of CGI has certainly made our life more bearable. But for Thor and Spider-Man, we were doing big snapbacks [when a person gets jerked by a cable simulating the effects of a gunshot or explosion] and a lot of the flying for real.

‘Modern technology has allowed us to do more stunts while putting the actors in.’

The beauty of CGI is that you can use cables as thick as your little finger. When we made Superman, we were hanging on little piano wires and they had to be painted to match the sky or whatever.

Modern technology has allowed us to do more stunts while putting the actors in, too. I think Chris Hemsworth in Thor ended up doing 99 percent of his stunts.

Wired.com: And that remaining 1 percent?

Armstrong: Honestly, the rest is when we needed to do a shot and he was out of town, shooting in New Mexico. The only dangerous one I can think of is when Thor gets thrown, and he bangs and bounces around on the ground. There isn’t a way to fake that, so no need to risk Chris.

Wired.com: Are there still stuntman-training programs and courses in Hollywood?

Armstrong: Oh yeah. But stuntmen are usually hired for a specific skill, whether a high diver, a horseman or a swordsman. You hire them for those abilities.

Wired.com: Can you tell us who, of the popular actors, are the best at doing their own stunts?

Armstrong: I think Chris Hemsworth and Tom Cruise are up there. Andrew Garfield is another. Of course, Harrison Ford was great, too. For years these guys have always wanted to do it, but now with modern technology, we can let them do it.

Audiences are ever more demanding. But also, they’re now competing with videogames that have incredible action, but no one is actually doing it. I think there’s a whole generation of kids thinking that kind of action is the norm.

Wired.com: Technological movements have a tendency to gain steam, and then an undercurrent pulls them back to the old ways — they go “retro.” Do you ever see a renaissance back to the days of no CGI and people are really jumping out of planes rather than being in a green room?

Armstrong: I think there may be that movement already. There’s been so much CGI that many are already a little sick of it. But it always comes down to how realistic the stunt ends up looking.

If done correctly, the audience shouldn’t know there was CGI involved at all. But I do think there’s a request to have things done more realistically. If the whole shot is done in a computer, it starts to become a cartoon, really.

Wired.com: Yeah, there were parts of Transformers where I didn’t feel like I was watching a movie anymore.

Armstrong: It could just be a fantastic videogame. Absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head. When you watch a movie you expect to stretch reality a little bit and get more from your heroes, but not necessarily say “Whoa. OK.” There is a certain line to be drawn.

I go to meetings now, and people are again saying, “We want this to be real, organic. To feel as real as possible.” And of course I’m thinking, “That’s what we’ve always liked doing.” [laughs]

Wired.com: And what about the cost argument, of stunt versus CGI?

Armstrong: We always joke that it’s “cheaper to use a real person,” but CGI costs are still coming down. But they are a hidden charge, if you like. In the end, a stunt may get lost in the budget of a $10 or $12 million scene, and you never really get to compare it against what you could have done.

There was some talk of having a stunt library when CGI was coming around four or five years ago, so people can go select whether they want this type of stunt or that. But moviemakers want something original. They don’t want something out of a library.

It’s the same reason directors don’t leave up their sets. People always wonder why they tear down expensive sets. “They could use it for another movie,” they say. But directors want it for their film and don’t want others to use.

Wired.com: A piece of art, really.

Armstrong: Exactly. They want their films to be individual. And same with a stunt library. They don’t want to pick-and-choose a shot of a guy falling off a parking garage. They want their own.

Wired.com: So after 40 years, what does the future hold for you?

Armstrong: I’m actually planning a couple shoots for Bollywood movies. It keeps me fresh going over there.

Wired.com: Must be quite a procedure to close a city block.

Armstrong: [laughs] People moan and think it’s hard in New York or L.A. — I always say try doing it in Mumbai. You have to keep thinking laterally in this business if you want to survive.

All photos courtesy Vic Armstrong.