William H. Burton Sr.

History

William H. Burton Sr., also known as Bill or Billy, is a stuntman, stunt coordinator and 2nd unit director. He was one of the original members of Stunts Unlimited and he received the 2019 Taurus Lifetime Achievement Award. One of the great all-around stuntmen, it is said of Billy that he can drive anything with wheels and ride anything with legs! Billy started ranching and found success on the rodeo circuit but soon moved to Hollywood. Many of the film and television productions at the time were Westerns so he was able to find steady work as a stuntman and extra. He got his start in stunts in 1965 by way of the rodeo to work on western films and television shows in Hollywood. He soon met mentor Hal Needham who taught him what it took to be a great stuntman and he was one of the original members of Stunts Unlimited formed in 1970 by Hal Needham, Glenn Wilder and Ronnie Rondell. In 1976 and 1978, Billy won the World Stuntman’s Competition on CBS Sports Spectacular, competing in motorcycle, car, and horse work for the award. From there, he transitioned into directing action sequences for film. He has brought numerous memorable sequences to life, including an exhilarating boat chase between Nicholas Cage and John Travolta in Face-Off and the iconic motorcycle chase in Mission: Impossible 2 with Tom Cruise. His directing credits include Mission: Impossible 2, The Scorpion King, Collateral Damage, Hostage, and more. With over 50 years as a stuntman, stunt coordinator, and 2nd unit director, Billy considers his career a great ride.

Movies

The Homesman
Stunt Coordinator
When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs, to join her. The unlikely pair and the three women head east, where a waiting minister and his wife have offered to take the women in. But the group first must traverse the harsh Nebraska Territories marked by stark beauty, psychological peril and constant threat.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Stunt Coordinator
Outlaw Jesse James is rumored to be the 'fastest gun in the West'. An eager recruit into James' notorious gang, Robert Ford eventually grows jealous of the famed outlaw and, when Robert and his brother sense an opportunity to kill James, their murderous action elevates their target to near mythical status.
House of Wax
Second Unit Director
A group of unwitting teens are stranded near a strange wax museum and soon must fight to survive and keep from becoming the next exhibit.
Hostage
Second Unit Director
When a mafia accountant is taken hostage on his beat, a police officer – wracked by guilt from a prior stint as a negotiator – must negotiate the standoff, even as his own family is held captive by the mob.
Hostage
Stunt Coordinator
When a mafia accountant is taken hostage on his beat, a police officer – wracked by guilt from a prior stint as a negotiator – must negotiate the standoff, even as his own family is held captive by the mob.
The Scorpion King
Second Unit Director
In ancient Egypt, peasant Mathayus is hired to exact revenge on the powerful Memnon and the sorceress Cassandra, who are ready to overtake Balthazar's village. Amid betrayals, thieves, abductions and more, Mathayus strives to bring justice to his complicated world.
Collateral Damage
Second Unit Director
Firefighter Gordon Brewer is plunged into the complex and dangerous world of international terrorism after he loses his wife and child in a bombing credited to Claudio 'The Wolf' Perrini.
Collateral Damage
Stunts
Firefighter Gordon Brewer is plunged into the complex and dangerous world of international terrorism after he loses his wife and child in a bombing credited to Claudio 'The Wolf' Perrini.
Collateral Damage
Stunt Coordinator
Firefighter Gordon Brewer is plunged into the complex and dangerous world of international terrorism after he loses his wife and child in a bombing credited to Claudio 'The Wolf' Perrini.
Mission: Impossible II
Second Unit Director
With computer genius Luther Stickell at his side and a beautiful thief on his mind, agent Ethan Hunt races across Australia and Spain to stop a former IMF agent from unleashing a genetically engineered biological weapon called Chimera. This mission, should Hunt choose to accept it, plunges him into the center of an international crisis of terrifying magnitude.
Go
Stunts
Grocery store clerk Simon occasionally sells drugs from his cash register at work, so when soap opera actors Adam and Zack come looking for Ecstasy on a quiet Christmas Eve, they are surprised to find Ronna covering his shift. Desperate for money, Ronna decides to become an impromptu drug dealer, unaware that Adam and Zack are secretly working for obsessed narcotics officer Burke.
The X Files
Second Unit Director
Mulder and Scully, now taken off the FBI's X Files cases, must find a way to fight the shadowy elements of the government to find out the truth about a conspiracy that might mean the alien colonization of Earth.
Face/Off
Second Unit Director
In order to foil a terrorist plot, an FBI agent undergoes facial transplant surgery and assumes the identity of a criminal mastermind. The plan turns sour when the criminal wakes up prematurely and seeks revenge.
Bad Boys
Stunts
Marcus Burnett is a hen-pecked family man. Mike Lowry is a foot-loose and fancy free ladies' man. Both are Miami policemen, and both have 72 hours to reclaim a consignment of drugs stolen from under their station's nose. To complicate matters, in order to get the assistance of the sole witness to a murder, they have to pretend to be each other.
The Good Old Boys
Second Unit Director
An aging cowboy must choose between his desire to remain free and the responsibilities of maintaining a family.
Dick Tracy
Stunt Coordinator
The comic strip detective finds his life vastly complicated when Breathless Mahoney makes advances towards him while he is trying to battle Big Boy Caprice's united mob.
K-9
Stunts
The extravagant cop Michael Dooley needs some help to fight a drug dealer who has tried to kill him. A "friend" gives him a dog named Jerry Lee (Officer Lewis), who has been trained to smell drugs. With his help, Dooley sets out to put his enemy behind the bars, but Jerry Lee has a personality of his own and works only when he wants to. On the other hand, the dog is quite good at destroying Dooley's car, house and sex-life...
Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge
Stunt Coordinator
Will Mannon, "product of the Devil's loins," is released from a frontier prison and promptly goes in search of the people who put him there some 12 years ago -- Matt Dillon and Kitty Russell.
Predator
Stunts
A team of elite commandos on a secret mission in a Central American jungle come to find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial warrior.
Soul Man
Stunts
A caucasian prospective grad student's affluent family won't pay his way through law school, so he takes tanning pills to darken his skin in order to qualify for an African-American scholarship at Harvard. He soon gets more than he bargained for, as he begins to learn what life is really like for blacks in America.
Jackals
Second Unit Director
Cops in a small town near the Mexican border find themselves caught up in a scheme that smuggles illegal aliens into the country.
The Entity
Stunts
Carla Moran, a hard-working single mother, is raped in her bedroom by someone — or something — that she cannot see. Despite skeptical psychiatrists, she is repeatedly attacked by this invisible force. Could this be a case of hysteria or something more horrific?
Wrong Is Right
Stunt Coordinator
Political double-talk, dirty tricks, hidden microphones, spy satellites, bugging the Oval Office and a nuclear bomb for sale are all ingredients in this swift, funny and frightening look at the possibilities in today's political arenas. Sean Connery stars as TV Newsman Patrick Hale on an international chase to track two suitcase sized nuclear weapons and to uncover the twisting maze of apparent involvement of US Government agencies.
Body Heat
Stunt Coordinator
In the midst of a searing Florida heat wave, a woman convinces her lover, a small-town lawyer, to murder her rich husband.
Hooper
Stunts
Legendary stunt man, Sonny Hooper remains one of the top men in his field, but due to too many stressful impacts to the spine and the need to pop pain killers several times a day, he knows he should get out of the industry before he ends up permanently disabled.
The Driver
Stunts
The Driver specializes in driving getaway cars for robberies. His exceptional talent has prevented him from being caught yet. After another successful flight from the police a self-assured detective makes it his primary goal to catch the Driver. He promises pardons to a gang if they help to convict him in a set-up robbery. The Driver seeks help from The Player to mislead the detective.
The Young Runaways
Stunt Driver
Heartless parents C.L. Doyle and his wife take two of their older children, Rosebud & Joseph T. Doyle, on a family vacation to Alaska, but dump their younger ones, Freddy & Margaret Jean, in a Los Angeles foster home. Infuriated by this, Rosebud talks Joseph T. into running away with her so that they can break their younger siblings out of the system, which sparks a manhunt, and an outburst of sympathy among kids everywhere.
Game of Death
Stunt Driver
A martial arts movie star must fake his death to find the people who are trying to kill him.
Boxcar Bertha
Stunt Coordinator
"Boxcar" Bertha Thompson, a transient woman in Arkansas during the violence-filled Depression of the early '30s, meets up with rabble-rousing union man "Big" Bill Shelly and the two team up to fight the corrupt railroad establishment.