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As well as being one of the most accomplished racers of the last 20 years, NEOM McLaren Extreme E Team driver Tanner Foust has carved out an equally successful film career.

But while you might not have seen him front and centre of the silver screen, he’s played a vital role in some of the biggest action movies of recent times. We asked Tanner to talk us through some of the highlights from his time in Hollywood…

Getting some practice in

Tanner’s early motorsport career and film career share something of a parallel: Drifting. One of the earliest films he worked on was The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift, where he doubled ‘DK’, the film’s villain.

“That was a standout movie for me just because of the amount of driving,” Tanner recalls. “It also established drift drivers as a good option for the stunt community to go to for technical driving. Now, if you look at the drivers out there that are doing movies that came from outside stunt families, they're almost all drift guys and girls, which is cool.” 

The experience of Tokyo Drift would later prove invaluable when it came to Tanner’s career in competition, with him going on to claim back-to-back Formula Drift titles in 2007-08.

“I worked about 60 nights on that film, shooting around LA, drifting that 350Z,” he says. “I competed in a 350Z in Formula Drift, which is the biggest drifting series in the States, and won that championship twice. I think a lot of that had to do with all the practice I got driving on set.”

Racing against the founder

While Tanner has been a McLaren driver since 2022, he’s also had a chance to drive alongside our founder – in a sense.

One of his biggest credits was the film Le Mans ‘66, or Ford v Ferrari to those of you outside the UK. The movie tells the story of the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans, which was won by Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon. Finishing third in that race were Americans Ronnie Bucknum and Dick Hutcherson, the former actually being portrayed on-camera by Tanner.

“That's quite interesting, purely because Bruce makes a very brief cameo in that film and it's a racing film about a story that is quite pertinent this year, because this is the 100th anniversary of Le Mans,” Tanner says. “I drove most of the cars at some point, but the only one that I was actually cast for was Ronnie Bucknum.

“When they do the 1-2-3 finish – if you blink, you'll miss it – you might see Christian [Bale, portraying Ken Miles] look over at the guy who finished third and kind of give him a thumbs up, and I give some sort of confused, non-actor nod of semi-approval. That's my big moment in that movie.”

The picture gave Foust a split second in the spotlight, but it very nearly wasn’t the case.

“They made a big effort to find the sons that were still racing. They found the kids of a lot of the racers from the '65 race and had them in the cars as stunt people,” he points out. “So Dan Gurney's kid, Alex, was driving one car, Phil Hill had Derek Hill, his son, Ronnie Bucknum actually did have a kid, and I tried to get them to use him in the scene instead of me.

“It would've made all the sense in the world, but he signed onto the movie late and casting had already been done. The way that Hollywood casting is, it's very difficult to unwind, but he drove his dad's car for most of the movie.”

Monaco Marvel

One of McLaren’s favourite haunts, the Circuit de Monaco, made an appearance in 2010’s Iron Man 2, when Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark competed in a historic grand prix race on the iconic track.

Tanner describes his work on the film as “a very short stint”, and understandably too, since the Monaco sequence doesn’t take up too much time. It’s a vital plot point, though, with it being where the film’s baddie – Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash – unveils himself to the world.

“We shot it in LA, and it just was sliding a yellow mockup of a vintage Formula 1 car to a stop while the actor’s out there with whips,” Tanner explains. “One of the funny parts of that scene was that when they were doing the pyrotechnics and actually launching the cars and the explosions, we went up into the stands – because we were stunt guys, we can kind of go anywhere.

“So, we went up into the stands and we sat with 7,000 blow up dolls that were sitting in the stands that all had clothes and wigs. They looked like people. You would sit in the stands there, and anytime the wind would blow, the whole crowd would move and shake at the same time, and you would forget when you were sitting there that they were all blow-up dolls.

“It was just the most out-of-body creepy experience.”

Beat up by Bourne

“I could almost see his teeth, he was smiling so big as he was coming in for the hit,” the thought of a grinning Matt Damon smashing a car into you is an odd one, but it was all in a day’s work for our in-house movie star.

2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum saw Tanner working alongside Damon, who Tanner describes as “one of those actors who really loved driving”. That took the coolest of jobs for the shoot from Foust, but didn’t leave him totally out of work. In fact, it placed him right into Damon’s firing line. Literally.

“Matt Damon had to crash into me as an agent,” Foust says. “He crashed into me 14 times in an afternoon. I mean, the first one was fine, but you could tell he just really enjoyed doing the stunt, he just kept on convincing the director that he thinks he could do it better.

“The car was all reinforced, so you couldn't see the side that kept on getting more and more dented, and the car still ran. So, he crashed into me 14 times. But that was a cool experience to work.”

Constant car crashes aside, The Bourne Ultimatum gave Tanner one of his first experiences working directly alongside an A-list actor, offering an insight into the differences when someone of Damon’s calibre is involved on a shoot.

“It's a weird push-pull situation with a lot of the actors, because they want to be in there doing it because they love that physical part of it,” Tanner points out, “but at the same time, they have to stay safe. If they get injured, it's everybody's job.

Free Tanner

While most of Tanner’s film work has been in the more believable real-world realm, one of his most recent credits saw him transformed into the virtual world of video games. But the setting wasn’t the only thing different about Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy – Tanner describes how it was shot as being a “unique experience”, too.

“A lot of the shots were called ‘oners’, where there'll be 10 or 20 stunts done in one shot,” he explains. “The camera will come with Ryan walking into the scene – for example, when he realises all the stuff that's going on as the player in the game, the camera just swings around his face, and you see a guy on fire, you see a guy jump off a building, you see a bazooka shoot at something else, and you see a car drive by all in one shot.

“The stunt team trains for two weeks to get all of those stunts to happen at the right time, and then all Ryan has to do is walk in one time, look around, and all the stunts just happen, and it takes one afternoon of his time to do that whole scene.

When it came to driving, it was a different big name that Foust stood in for.

“One of them was Channing Tatum, he's driving a convertible and sliding around helicopters, falling out of the ground, doing a 360, and shooting around,” Tanner says.

While set in the virtual world, the bulk of the stunt work was done practically, with visual effects being added later on.

“When you would do the take, you had to dodge an imaginary helicopter, and then you had to slide. They had to do some difficult moves with the camera to shoot over the hoods of police cars and stuff that were chasing, and then doing the 360, you had to start the 360 and put your arm out, and then they would finish it through CGI or some sort of rig.

“I love that they do all that stuff practically to make sure the motion is real,” he continues. “When you see CGI stuff, you can tell that it's fake. We're really good at that. So they tend to use a real car's motion to be the baseline of the CGI and then fill in all of the accoutrement in post.”

Which of Tanner’s films has been your favourite? Can you spot where he makes an appearance in each of the movies mentioned here? Let us know on social media using #FansLikeNoOther.