'Bullet Train' director David Leitch went from slugging it out as a stuntman to creating beloved action movies like 'John Wick' and 'Deadpool 2.' Here's how he did it.

• David Leitch is one of the biggest action directors in Hollywood.
• He talks to Insider about his journey from stunt man to changing the genre with "John Wick."
• Leitch talks about making "Bullet Train" on virtual sets during the pandemic. 

Just breathe. All you have to do is go through this wall and crash through a table. Just breathe.

These were the thoughts going through David Leitch's head just moments before performing his first-ever stunt on a movie set.

It's the late 1990s and Leitch is somewhere in Mexico. Leitch's good friend Chad Stahelski got him a stuntman gig on the B-movie "Perfect Target." Leitch has been given the task of taking a kick from the film's hero, played by Daniel Bernhardt, which is meant to be so powerful that it sends Leitch through a wall, crash landing on a table on the other side.

"They padded me on my belly because Daniel really kicked me and then I just flew backwards," Leitch recalled of the stunt while talking to Insider on the phone from Sydney, Australia.

He pulled it off unscathed. And in one take. Well, Leitch admits it's hard to brag about that because the movie only had enough money to do the stunt once. But a stunt performer never forgets their first hit, and it changed his life forever.

Once he got back to the midwest, the then-twentysomething Leitch quit teaching 2nd grade, packed his bags, and moved out to Los Angeles to live with Stahelski and a small rag-tag group of wannabe stuntmen.

Leitch didn't know it yet, but it was his first step in a journey that would lead to redefining how the American action movie would be made.

Leitch is one of the most sought-after action directors in Hollywood, thanks to movies like 'John Wick' and 'Deadpool 2'

If Leitch's name doesn't ring a bell, the four movies he's directed will: "John Wick," "Atomic Blonde," "Deadpool 2," "Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw."

All of them found acclaim for their action and fight sequences, turning him into one of the perennial blockbuster directors working today. It also doesn't hurt that his directing efforts have earned a combined $2 billion at the worldwide box office to date.

Now, Leitch, 46, is delivering another action-packed ride with "Bullet Train" (in theaters August 5), starring a bevy of big-name stars, including one he once stunt doubled for: Brad Pitt.

Based on the Japanese novel "Maria Beetle" by Kōtarō Isaka, we follow Pitt as he plays an assassin named Ladybug who boards a bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto with the orders to collect a briefcase onboard. What he doesn't know is there are also other killers — played by the likes of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Bad Bunny, Joey King, and Zazie Beetz — who have been hired for the same job, leading to chaos and bloodshed.

Like Leitch's previous movies, "Bullet Train" is thrilling, ultra-violent, and fun. But to deliver all of that takes painstaking expertise behind the scenes. And in an era where it seems every action movie is mind-numbingly the same, that's what makes his stand out.

Nearly every fight in Leitch's movies isn't CGI-enhanced. Instead, he puts his actors through weeks of grueling training so they can do most of the fighting on camera themselves. 

The journey from watching Kung-Fu movies to becoming a stuntman

Born and raised in Kohler, Wisconsin — a town known best for sharing its name with a plumbing manufacturing giant — Leitch spent his formative years obsessing over Kung-Fu classics with his friends.

"I would watch Kung-Fu theater on Channel 13 at midnight on Saturdays with my friends and then we'd try to fake fight the next morning in my yard," he recalled.

It got to the point where his home featured a makeshift dojo stacked with martial-arts-training books and a fighting dummy he made from PVC piping.

But there weren't many outlets for him to expand his martial arts training in Kohler. With a high school graduating class of only 40 students, his extracurricular activities ranged from wrestling to theater.

"You had to be involved in things or they wouldn't have a program," he said. "So to come out of high school with this small town experience where you got to do everything is part of who I am as an artist."

By the time he attended the University of Minnesota, Leitch was starving to learn more about martial arts beyond how-to books and late-night Kung-Fu marathons. He signed up to train at the Inosanto Academy, which was run by Dan Inosanto, Bruce Lee's training partner. And that's where he began running into fellow student Stahelski.

But again came another roadblock: How could he use martial arts to make a living? With both parents being teachers, he went into the family trade. Until he got that call from Stahelski.

"When I got to set and saw the guys doing stunts the bells went off," Leitch said. "I was like, 'Oh my god, I can use this martial arts knowledge here.' It just seemed cool to create fight scenes, run, jump, and fall off stuff."

The experience convinced him to go out to L.A.

"My parents still think I'm nuts for doing it," he said with a laugh. "They are constantly like, 'Are you ever going back to teaching?'"

Hustling in Hollywood led to Leitch stunt doubling for Brad Pitt and setting high goals after 'The Matrix'

When Leitch, Stahelski, and his pals weren't practicing falling off scaffolding to lighting themselves on fire, they were trying to get noticed by Hollywood stunt coordinators, whose job it is to hire the stunt performers for movies.

"What it used to be like for stunt performers to get out there and get known was this discipline called 'hustling.'" Leitch explained. "It was a right of passage for all stunt performers."

"When a stunt coordinator was working at a certain location he's expecting the young performers to sneak on the lot and give them a VHS tape with their demo and headshot," he continued. "And you had to kind of do it multiple times before you even got respect from a coordinator."

Leitch said he and his friends found the best way to get on a lot was by using their friend's pickup truck. Once they pulled up to the gate, the driver would act like he was there for a delivery. But unbeknownst to the security guard, Leitch and his friends were hiding in the back. Once inside the gate, Leitch and others would jump out and set off to find the stunt coordinator.

"The fake delivery was always the best one," Leitch said.

While earning money as a kickboxing teacher, Leitch began to catch some breaks. He stunt-doubled for Pitt in 1999's "Fight Club" (and went on to double him on movies like "The Mexican," " Ocean's Eleven," and "Mr. & Mrs. Smith").

He also landed a job as Jean-Claude Van Damme's stunt double. Suddenly, he was flying to Bulgaria, which had become the direct-to-DVD action-movie capital of the world, thanks to its enticing tax breaks. There, Leitch worked on movies with extremely talented stunt performers, despite being low budget.

"It was film school on steroids," he said. "I worked with Ringo Lam, this famous Hong Kong director, and he was influential on my directorial life." Lam, who directed several Van Damme movies before his death in 2018, took Leitch under his wing and allowed him to design the fights and action scenes in those movies.

But then Stahelski tracked down Leitch for "The Matrix Reloaded." Stahelski was Keanu Reeves' stunt double in the first "Matrix" movie and became the martial arts stunt coordinator for the sequels.

"With the experience that Chad had with 'The Matrix' and the experience I had working with Ringo, we went forward from that first 'Matrix' movie and began to build our style: doing Hong Kong action with an American style," Leitch said.

Suddenly, all Hollywood wanted in action movies were fights with the high-flying wirework used to pull off the spectacular stunts in "The Matrix." Leitch and Stahelski were known around town as "the wire guys."

The two elevated to stunt coordinating for movies like "Constantine" and "300," followed by second-unit directing on "Conan the Barbarian" and "The Hunger Games."

They landed jobs by taking a page from their hustling days looking for stunt work. They would film elaborate fight scenes, a method now called "fight-vis," which showed a complex fight sequence with close-up shots. They would then send them to studios as pitch material to land coordinator or second-unit jobs on upcoming blockbusters.

"That wasn't done before us," said Leitch speaking of fight-vis, which has since become commonplace in the stunt world. "And we shot and edited the footage for everything we did, nonstop ideas."

It led to them doing second-unit work on movies like "Jurassic World" and "Captain America: Civil War."

Eventually, Leitch and Stahelski launched 87eleven, a one-stop shop for all things action movies, complete with rentable stunt equipment and training for aspiring stunt performers. An enthusiastic manager named Kelly McCormick joined the team and began working on getting Leitch and Stahelski feature-directing opportunities.

"Honestly, in the beginning, I wasn't sure about him directing," McCormick said of Leitch, her now-husband and producing partner. "But he was cool and seemed to know what he was doing."

Leitch got close to a gig. Around 2012, McCormick said he signed on to helm the Dwayne Johnson-led action drama "Dan Mintner: Badass for Hire." But it languished in development hell, clearing a path for him and Stahelski to go forward with a project their good friend from "The Matrix" movies, Keanu Reeves, agreed to be the star of: "John Wick."

How 'John Wick' changed everything

The audience in the packed theater at Alamo Drafthouse's annual Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas couldn't get enough of it. A long-haired Reeves plays a man who stepped away from being a cold-blooded killer until a group of unwitting thugs killed his dog. Now he's back for revenge, and no one is safe.

I was in the audience at the world premiere of "John Wick" in 2014 and can still remember the energy in the room. The action on-screen was unlike anything seen since "The Matrix." But instead of logic-defying fight moves dodging slo-mo bullets, Reeves was fighting in a practical, grounded way, and it was mesmerizing.

"We felt the same energy you felt," said Leitch who codirected "John Wick" with Stahelski, but due to DGA rules was not given a credit.

Backstage at Fantastic Fest, Leitch recalled Stahelski, Reeves, and himself soaking it all in. At the time, Lionsgate only committed to releasing the movie internationally. Leitch remembers standing next to a Lionsgate executive who saw the initial Twitter reaction after the screening. He said to Leitch, "We're gonna have to release this movie!"

"He called me and was like, 'I think people like this thing! I think it's okay and we're going to have a career,'" McCormick recalled Leitch telling her over the phone that night.

The movie made Leitch and Stahelski the hottest action directors in the business. The review of the movie in Variety put it best: "Whereas the tendency among many other helmers is to jostle the camera and cut frenetically in the misguided belief that visual confusion generates excitement, [Leitch and Stahelski] understand what a thrill well-choreographed action can be when we're actually able to make out what's happening."

The movie was a box-office success and spawned two sequels with another coming out next year. As well as copycats like "Gunpowder Milkshake," "Kate," and "Clean," all trying to capture the "gun-fu" magic of "John Wick."

As Stahelski continued to helm the franchise, Leitch set out to forge his own path (though he's still a producer on the sequels).

Leitch's follow-up, "Atomic Blonde," which features a badass Charlize Theron pulling off an elaborate fight sequence in a single shot, proved "John Wick" wasn't a fluke. He then took on two major blockbusters: "Deadpool 2" and "Hobbs & Shaw." In the process, he successfully put his practical action stylings to the test in franchises that are very CG heavy.

But with "Bullet Train," Leitch went back to basics. He had to because, when the pandemic hit, there was no other way to make the movie.

Due to the pandemic, Leitch made 'Bullet Train' on a studio lot using virtual sets

In a world of spoilers and leaks, stunt performers are the last secret keepers in Hollywood. When your job is literally making it look like a movie star is doing all the spectacular things on the big screen, you have a knack for keeping things under wraps.

That certainly has stayed with Leitch as he's transitioned from stunts to directing. Don't let the engaging personality and friendly grin fool you. The man is a vault.

When asked about being a stunt double for Brad Pitt, he somehow couldn't recollect anything from that time in his life. When asked to address the reports that Lady Gaga was originally in "Bullet Train," he declined to comment.

However, he did address the rumor that he was approached to take over the latest "Fast and Furious" movie after Justin Lin left. "That was never really a conversation I had," he said. "The Transporter" director Louis Leterrier replaced Lin on the project.

What Leitch loves to get into is the filmmaking craft. The word "bold" came up a lot in our chat. He thinks that way when developing an action sequence. He also thinks it when pulling off a surprising cameo, which has become a continuing element in Leitch's movies since "Deadpool 2" when Pitt suddenly appeared as Vanisher. (There's a doozy in "Bullet Train.")

Leitch is always searching to make things outside the box. And a lot of that was needed for "Bullet Train."

Shot during the height of the pandemic, "Bullet Train" is one of the rare movies these days to be made entirely on a studio lot. Made by Sony, its soundstages were home for the movie's production, which used LED virtual sets, made famous on "The Mandalorian." Crews worked diligently overnight to switch soundstages, going from the interior of a Japanese bullet train one day to a flashback location the next.

It also forced Leitch to alter how the fighting would be done in the movie.

"By design, the fights are different than 'John Wick' and 'Atomic Blonde,'" Leitch said of "Bullet Train." "They are by design smaller pieces."

Because most of the movie takes place on a train, action sequences were broken up into condensed fights for the actors to pull off. Leitch compared it to a Jackie Chan movie, with lots of quick jabs and kicks.

For Leitch making the movie was a full circle moment, especially with Pitt as his lead. 

"When he came on this, he seemed to respect me already as a director," Leitch said of Pitt. "Obviously we worked a little on 'Deadpool 2.' We fell into this great friend rapport that we had in the years we spent together. But I was just blown away by him embracing me as the director and leaning into my ideas." 

Despite now also producing movies alongside McCormick, like the Bob Odenkirk-starrer "Nobody" and the upcoming action comedy "Violent Night," Leitch said directing is his primary focus for the foreseeable future.

During Insider's interview, Leitch was out in Sydney, Australia doing prep for his next directing gig, "The Fall Guy," which will be a modern take on the classic 1980s TV show and star Ryan Gosling.

For a guy who has the physical scars to prove how far he's gotten in the business, Leitch doesn't seem ready to let up just yet.

"I don't want to slow down," he said. "There are a lot of stories I want to tell and there's a lot of creativity still in me and I don't take this opportunity lightly. I try to make the most of it every day. So I think we just found the path to make fun, creative, bold movies."