Kenny Bates
American actor and second unit director
Kenneth W. Bates is an American stuntman, film producer, second unit director, and actor, best known for his work with Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, and Jerry Bruckheimer.
Life and career
In 1988, Bates was the stunt double for Alan Rickman in the film Die Hard during the scene where the latter's character, Hans Gruber, falls to his death. Bates then became one of few stuntman to win an Academy Award for such a feat.
In 2004, when Bates could not find an existing high-speed camera vehicle that could shoot dynamic, low to the ground car chase sequences, he developed and created his own, the versatile Gas Go-Kart and Electric-Kart so he could film his high-octane action sequences. He later founded PFA Prague Film Associates with producer Tomas Rotnagl.
In 2023, Bates joined the production crew of the upcoming Bollywood film NTR 30.
He is also a frequent collaborator of Michael Bay's, having directed second unit on almost all of his films, including first three Transformers movies, Bad Boys 1, The Rock, Armageddon, The Island, and Pearl Harbor, the latter of which won him a Taurus World Stunt Award for "Best 2nd Unit Director".
The public source identifies “Kenny Bates” as american actor and second unit director. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kenny, Bates and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131399968. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1988, 2004 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kenny Bates” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.