Szilvia Gogh: Scuba Diver To Hollywood Stunt Double

From a young age, 37-year-old Szilvia Gogh knew that she wanted to be a scuba instructor.  Growing up in landlocked Hungary – a country still under communist control at the time – can make it difficult to pursue a career in scuba diving, but not for Gogh. 

At 13-years-old, she was already competing in orienteering diving, a sport which occurs in lakes with practically no visibility. The object of the sport is to find predetermined destinations using a compass, map and a distance accounting device.  While Gogh wasn’t the most talented in the water, she knew her strengths and used those characteristics to advantage.

“Plenty of my colleagues were superior swimmers, so I worked diligently to develop my navigational skills,” Gogh recalled.  “In clear water, my competitors could outswim me but in bad visibility, I would usually excel because of my ability to be fairly precise with my compass.”

Those skills weren’t perfected overnight but rather through practice and a grueling schedule.  Gogh would train four to five times a week, while spending all summer near one of Hungary’s lakes or rivers.  It wasn’t until she had logged nearly 500 hours that Gogh experienced her first ocean dive.

And it was life-changing for the then 18-year-old.

“Afterwards, while standing on the beach, I decided that I wanted to live in a place with an ocean and sandy beaches, where it is summer all year round,” Gogh admitted.  “I declared this to my friends and they suggested that I watch the Jacques Cousteau movies but I did not want to just watch his movies – I wanted to make my own.”

It was at that moment Gogh discovered how she wanted to spend her life, however her parents didn’t weren’t exactly on board, so she went to the University of Engineering in Budapest.  There, she majored in marketing and management, as a backup plan – which would later prove helpful.  After graduation, Gogh focused all of her energy on diving and soon became a PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) Course Director, the youngest female ever to earn the title.

“The more people told me that I could not go and live in exotic places while making a living with my passion, the more determined I became to prove to myself that I could do anything I put my mind to,” she added.  “Once I made up my mind, I felt like I was writing my own story, directing my own movie and fulfilling my destiny.”

Little did Gogh know, she would soon be instrumental in the movie making process – not just her own, but also for several Hollywood blockbusters.

With over 5,000 dives under her belt and more than 1,000 diving certifications distributed, Gogh was an authority on all things diving.  One day, while working at a diving center, she was approached by a talent scout in search of girls who could swim in the ocean for an upcoming Axe commercial.  To most, swimming in a bikini is not a challenging task, but to do so in 50 degrees all day proved difficult for the majority of the 50 women looking for their big break. 

“By noon, most of the swimmers either got seasick from waiting on the boat for hours between shoots, or got severely hypothermic,” Gogh said.  “By the end of the day, only a teenage lifeguard and I remained.”

Once the gig was finished, the company made her Screen Actors Guild (SAG) eligible, which offers an enormous advantage.  Only SAG members can work on union movie sets.  Most must wait a great deal of time for this opportunity, so Gogh knew she had to take advantage of it.  After a few jobs working as a stunt diver on TV shows like Flash Forward and Desperate Housewives, Gogh earned a spot on a summer blockbuster – the 2010 remake of the horror film Piranha 3D.

Gogh was cast to double for actress Dina Meyer, one of the film’s co-stars.  It was a week-long stint for the diving double, who got the opportunity to mingle with the cast and the stunt crew.  Working on the film was fun, but as Gogh recalls on a blog post for her website, it was also difficult:

In the afternoon the special effect guys applied plenty of blood (paint) on my body for my dying scene in the caves. They all said this horror movie had the most blood and gore they have ever worked on.  Director Alexandre Aja is apparently the [Federico] Fellini of horror movies (I don’t watch much horror movies, so I do not know). I have to say he had all the ingredients for a successful movie; young hot guys and girls in bikinis getting eaten by (awesome looking) piranhas while partying during spring break, all in HD.

My scene became a bit more complicated than was first planned. Not only did I have to die in a cave on my back while the piranhas were munching on me, I had to lose my gear as well during my final minutes. Good thing I practiced.   The director’s new direction involved me kicking and fighting the sharp-toothed fish gang while taking off my full-face mask, and creating a dramatic look with bubbles and blood mixing together.  I also had to fight the piranhas off my face for a while in the tight cave (holding my breath) and crawling out of the cave with my final strength. 

I have to say it was a bit scary knowing the tight cave’s two entrances were both blocked with camera operators, I couldn’t see anything, my gear was thrown away and I had one breath.

For Gogh, Piranha 3D tested her abilities as a diver but proved she had what it took to be successful in Hollywood and not long after, she received additional stunt work for films like The Green Hornet (2011), Big Miracle (2012) and Sinister (2012), as well as the TV shows Dexter and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  She has even trained some of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Dive Team leaders to become PADI instructors – an experience she claims was “like being in a real-life video game”.

However, Gogh certainly has a favorite moment from her stunt work.

“Doubling Drew Barrymore in Big Miracle was a dream come true for me,” she said.  “We are about the same age and I grew up watching her movies, while often imagining that I was her.” 

Ed Miller is a contributor for CraveOnline Sports and a movie quote extraordinaire. You can follow him on Twitter @PhillyEdMiller or “like” CraveOnline Sports on Facebook.