Gary Connery

He was the stunt-double of the Queen during the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. He has performed 880 skydives and 450 BASE jumps. He has jumped from locations such as the Eiffel Tower, Nelson's Column, the London Eye, London's Tower Bridge, and from inside the Millennium Dome.

On 23 May 2012 Connery made his wingsuit jump from a helicopter flying at a height of 2,400 feet (730 m) over Ridge Wood in Buckinghamshire near his hometown of Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. Coming back from California (Perris Valley) in 2003, where he did his first wingsuit flight, he said: "that could be landed!" and he went for a week to do wingsuit flight training at Empuriabrava on the coast of Spain, the largest dropzone in Europe. Before the final attempt, he had made two test flights landing with a parachute. He had also trained for weeks in Italy and Switzerland in preparation for the jump. He had to obtain permission from the Civil Aviation Authority for the dive. The flight was filmed by Mark Sutton.

The plot of one of the skits during the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics had the Queen go on a secret mission with James Bond played by Daniel Craig. During the mission, the Queen was supposed to ride a helicopter with Bond and parachute at the stadium during the Olympic ceremonies. Connery acted as the Queen's stunt double. During the night of the opening ceremonies, the helicopter carrying Connery and Mark Sutton, who acted as James Bond's double, was given permission to take-off at 8:50 p.m. local time and was then directed to the stadium where it assumed a position, hovering at a height of 800 feet (240 m).

Landing in a wingsuit without using a parachute had been one of Jeb Corliss's main objectives since 2010. Corliss and other top-level wingsuit jumpers had tried for years to design wingsuits similar to the one which Connery helped design and subsequently used for his record-setting leap.

On 9 May 2003 Connery jumped off Nelson's Column at Trafalgar Square in Central London in what was described as a "death-defying protest stunt" which was organised by Act For Tibet, in support of the Dalai Lama.

Gary Connery (born 1970) is a British skydiver, BASE jumper, and professional stuntman. Connery has performed stunt-work in films. He has also acted as the stunt-double for Gary Oldman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rowan Atkinson, and John Hurt. He is acknowledged as the first skydiver to land after a wingsuit jump without using a parachute. He made his first parachute jump at age 23, as part of his army training.