- Christchurch agent Eneka Burroughs was a body double for Miriam Margolyes in the movie Holy Days.
- Burroughs performed stunts Margolyes couldn’t, including falling in water and high-speed car chases.
- She found the experience surreal and rewarding, despite no plans to leave real estate for acting.
A Christchurch real estate agent took a six-week hiatus from selling homes to be a body double for Harry Potter star Miriam Margolyes.
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Ray White Burnside’s Eneka Burroughs told OneRoof she had no idea what she was getting herself into when her friend tagged her in a Facebook post for a casting callout for the Kiwi comedy movie Holy Days.
The producers were looking for someone who was 4-foot 11, and Burroughs’ friend thought she fit the bill.
Burroughs decided to apply, and after sending the producers some photos of herself in her underwear, she bagged the job. “I’ve never wanted to be an extra on Shortland Street, I’ve never been on the stage. It’s just not me, and I just suddenly thought, well, you’ve got to do things in life that you know you’ve never done before, or you don’t grow.”
Burroughs, centre, with her body-double co-stars. Photo / Supplied
But she didn’t realise what she had actually signed up for until two days later, when she was at the University of Canterbury for costume fittings. “I walked in, and I said, ‘So what am I doing?’ And they said, ‘You’re a stunt double or a body double for Miriam Margolyes’. And I was like, ‘What, the lady from Harry Potter?’.”
Margolyes was over in New Zealand with acclaimed Australian actors Jackie Weaver and Judy Davis, filming a comedy drama about three elderly nuns who go on a road trip with a young boy struggling with the death of his mother.
Burroughs, 45, was hired to do everything the 84-year-old Margolyes couldn’t. She falls over in the water, snuffs out a candle by farting, squeezes into a 1970s Holden with no seat belts and holds on for dear life during high-speed car chases.
“They taught me how to fall out of bed and land on my face without hurting myself. I appear in the movie, but you’ll never know it’s me. It looks like it’s Miriam the whole time,” Burroughs told OneRoof.
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“We had a stunt coordinator on site who taught us how to do all these tricks and things and not get ourselves hurt. So, it’s a random thing to add to my CV.”
Two other Christchurch women – an actress who got the role through her agent and a stay-at-home mum – were recruited as body doubles for Davis and Weaver.
During the six weeks of filming around the South Island, Burroughs got to know Margoyles quite well and said she was a lot of fun and interested in getting to know those around her.
Margoyles, known to legions of Harry Potter fans for her role as Professor Sprout in the blockbuster movies, took Burroughs’ phone one day to look at her photos, and when she returned from filming a scene, started asking her a whole lot of questions about her life.
Margolyes with Harry Potter co-star Daniel Radcliffe on the Graham Norton Show. Photo / Getty Images
Margoyles’ blunt sense of humour, which is well known from her regular appearances on the Graham Norton Show, also came out over breakfast one day.
Burroughs offered to get her bacon and sausages, to which the star replied: “I can’t eat that, I’m Jewish, and you shouldn’t eat that because you’re fat.”
Burroughs laughed: “She was shocking, but she wasn’t mean, she was just so funny and amazing to work with.”
Burroughs said the whole experience, which took place 15 months ago, seemed surreal. With the movie now showing in New Zealand cinemas, she is quite proud of what she had achieved.
“Not that I had a massive role in it, but I can pick what bits are me and what bits are Miriam. So, I’m like that’s me, that’s me, whereas you wouldn’t know,” she said.
Burroughs has seen Holy Day four times on the big screen – once at the Christchurch premiere for the cast and crew who worked on it, once with her family, once with her workmates and with her 14-year-old daughter, who wanted to watch her mum on screen again.
She said it had been an amazing experience, and while she has no plans to quit her day job for a career in acting, she’s pleased she responded to the callout.
“It was hard work, the money’s not as good as real estate, but I learned so much because all of it everything was brand new to me every day.”
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