When Peter Rabbit 2 is released next year, don't expect to recognise Marlee Barber but know she's helped make the movie look its best.
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Barber, who grew up in Walla, is the stunt actor who doubled for actor Rose Byrne during filming, one of more than 50 film and television credits over the past five years.
Now based in Sydney, Barber, 26, said every job, whether it be a stair fall, boxing or being set alight, presented a new physical challenge in a workplace of deadlines and tight budgets.
"You've got to come in, you've got to do it, you've got to nail it and that's it," she said.
"You know you've got the body control to do it, you know you've got the aerial awareness, but you've never actually done that particular thing before."
Barber learned gymnastics as a child, then took up diving and left the family farm at 15 to train in Sydney.
She loved an early opportunity to jump 13 metres into Sydney Harbour for television's Dance Academy and later thought stunt work could be a way to use those skills.
"Don't think at the time I really thought it was going to be a viable career, but throughout uni I started getting more and more work," she said.
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Given her background - she also trained in pole vaulting - working at height and high falls come naturally to Barber and bring the same feelings that once accompanied learning a new dive.
"I loved that moment when you have to commit to something you've never done before," she said.
"It's almost like you have to convince yourself to overcome the fear that you're feeling."
Some highlights have been a full body torch on political drama Secret City and doubling for actor Hilary Swank in a fight scene during science fiction film I Am Mother, where she was smashed against a glass cabinet, choked and thrown to the floor.
Bruising is common in stunt work but Barber's only serious injury was a fractured pelvis in 2016.
"I unfortunately hit the cliff on the way down when I wasn't meant to," she said.
"It is calculated risk and if something does go wrong, there's usually been a number of things along the way that could have been done differently to prevent the accident from happening."
Barber plans to continue her current path, even though she finished her exercise physiology studies.
"I can always do that later on but stunts isn't a later on thing, it's a right now thing," she said.
