SARANAC LAKE – You may not know Leslie Hoffman, but chances are you’ve seen her work in film and television.

That’s her, dressed as Queen Elizabeth, sliding on her back across a long banquet table, with a stuntman dressed as Leslie Nielsen lying on top of her, in the 1988 movie “The Naked Gun.”

She was Doris Roberts’ regular stunt double in the 1980s detective show “Remington Steele” and in the 1989 film “Christmas Vacation.” More recently, she did stunt falls and fight scenes on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “Star Trek: Voyager” in the mid-1990s, and was the stunt double for actress Laurie Metcalf in the 1997 Wes Craven hit “Scream 2.”

Hoffman, who was born and raised in Saranac Lake, was one of Hollywood’s top stuntwomen at the height of her 25-year career.

Since 2002, however, Hoffman hasn’t had a paid job in the business she loves. Instead, she has grappled with what she says are the debilitating after-effects and injuries, both physical and psychological, of a career spent falling down stairs, leaping off boats and staging car crashes.

Now, Hoffman is in the middle of a different kind of battle, a legal wrangle over her benefits with the administrators of the Screen Actors Guild Health Plan. The Health Plan has denied Hoffman’s efforts to get health benefits she says she’s entitled to, and last month it told her it was taking away her pension.

“It pains me,” Hoffman told the Enterprise last week, “because one of the greatest days of my life was to become a member of the Screen Actors Guild. Now, one of my saddest days was to become a member of the Screen Actors Guild, because this is how they treat their members.”

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Growing up

Hoffman, the middle child of Howard and Bertha Hoffman, took ballet and gymnastics classes and was performing on stage at four years of age.

“In grade school, every year the teacher would ask us to write about what are you going to be when you grow up,” Hoffman said. “At that point, I said I was going to be an actress. I knew I was going to be in the entertainment industry.”

She later took acting classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Herbert Berghof Studios in New York City. She said she found acting “boring” until a visit to see her older brother, Stanley, at the California Institute of Technology changed everything.

“We went to Universal Studios, where they had the stunt show,” Hoffman said. “It was a Western stunt show. A guy comes out and cracks the whip. They do a stunt fight. They were acting, but they were also active. That’s when the light bulb turned on. I said, ‘That’s what I want to be.'”

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The break

After graduating from Saranac Lake High School in 1973, Hoffman went to California to be a stuntwoman. She first worked odd jobs, including stints as a grocery store cashier and a security guard on the set of “The Price is Right” and other shows.

“Those were the two jobs I had while I was hoping to get a break,” Hoffman said. “Then I discovered a gym in Santa Monica where stunt people used to practice. There was a stuntman that was kind of instructing us. We basically taught each other how to do high falls and fight scenes.”

Hoffman’s first stuntwoman job came in the 1976 film “Two-Minute Warning,” starring Charlton Heston, about a maniacal sniper who plans a killing spree in a football stadium during a championship game. It was filmed in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

That job got her into the Screen Actors Guild, but working her way into the film industry would take more time and a lot of persistence, Hoffman said.

“It isn’t the stunts that are the toughest part of being a stuntwoman or an actress or actor, it’s getting your next job,” she said.

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Credits

Hoffman eventually found work on a long list of television shows including “Emergency,” “Fantasy Island,” “M*A*S*H” and “CHiPs.” In an episode of “The Love Boat,” she fell nearly 80 feet into Los Angeles Harbor.

On the big screen, Hoffman was nearly decapitated while practicing a stunt for the John Belushi movie “1941,” crashing into the back of a truck while riding on a motorcycle sidecar. In 1985’s “Clue,” Hoffman played a dead body that was dropped on its head eight times by actors Tim Curry, Martin Mull and Michael McKean until the director was happy.

The banquet table slide in “The Naked Gun” may be Hoffman’s most recognizable stunt. She said it was actually two scenes, the first of which involved a stuntman, dressed as Nielsen, jumping off a mini-trampoline and crashing into her, dressed as the queen. Then she and the stuntman were put on a rolling tray and pulled across the table using a wire.

“We were sliding down the table, knocking things out of the way with my legs up in the air,” Hoffman said. “We got to the end of the table, and people were applauding us.”

Many of the stunts Hoffman performed involved falls down flights of stairs, mock fights and leaps from rigged explosions. It was demanding work, but “it was fun to do these jobs,” Hoffman said.

Apart from her work in TV and film, Hoffman was the first stuntwoman elected to the SAG Board of Directors. She advocated for more safety measures for stunt performers and fought discrimination against stuntwomen.

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Disability

Over time, however, Hoffman says her line of work started to take its toll.

“As I got into the later 1990s, things just started to hurt,” she said. “I’d have migraines. I had three knee surgeries, two shoulder surgeries. You just don’t feel right anymore.”

In 2003, Hoffman had a nervous breakdown and spent a combined 40 days in two psychiatric centers. The following year, the Social Security Administration granted Hoffman disability benefits based on her “severe major depression” although she originally applied based on her physical injuries as a stuntwoman.

The SAG Health Plan awarded Hoffman a disability pension in 2004, but when she applied to convert it to an “occupational disability pension” in order to receive health coverage, administrators denied her request. Hoffman sued in 2010 and the case was initially dismissed. She appealed to the 9th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals and won.

The appeals court, in its April 2014 ruling, found that the Health Plan failed to allow Hoffman to get a second medical opinion. The Plan had consulted with a doctor who determined, without examining Hoffman, that she was disabled based on her mental illness, not because of a work-related injury.

How does Hoffman know her injuries were caused by her career as a stuntwoman?

“Because I didn’t hit my head on the floor eight times at home,” Hoffman said. “I didn’t fall down a staircase at home. I didn’t jump 78 feet off the Love Boat into the water at home. That’s my defense.”

Since winning her appeal, Hoffman has also presented the Health Plan with two brain scan tests that show she has a traumatic brain injury.

“She had a history, as a stunt worker, of falling on her head repeatedly,” Hoffman’s attorney, Charles Fleishman, told Deadline Hollywood, an online entertainment industry news site that’s followed Hoffman’s case. “The stunt work ruined her physically.”

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SAG strikes back

While her legal case remains unsolved, SAG has notified Hoffman that it plans to strip her of her $981-a-month disability pension and has ordered her to repay more than $123,000 in pension payments she’s received since 2004. Its letter claims Hoffman has been “holding yourself out” as a stunt coordinator and working on several projects while claiming to be disabled.

As evidence, SAG named four projects, citing information from Hoffman’s website and her Internet Movie Database web page. However, one of the projects SAG cited – a short film called “Far as the Eye Can See” – was actually filmed in 1999, before Hoffman went on disability. It wasn’t released until 2006.

Two of the other projects SAG cited are “Star Trek” fan productions, including one Hoffman was involved in that was filmed in Ticonderoga. She says she wasn’t paid for this work.

Hoffman, who lives in Mission Hills, California, said her lawyer has filed an appeal, but if the appeal hearing doesn’t happen soon enough, her pension checks could stop coming and she won’t be able to pay her mortgage.

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Regrets?

Deadline Hollywood says SAG is afraid that by granting Hoffman’s claim “they might be opening the flood gates” to disability claims from other stuntmen and women, citing internal SAG emails and documents the site obtained.

Hoffman thinks she’s not the only one in this situation.

“I just feel there are more (stunt men and women) out there that are not getting their occupational disability, pension and health,” she said.

After several weeks visiting her parents, who live at Saranac Village at Will Rogers, Hoffman heads back to California on Aug. 6. There she’ll resume her five-day-a-week regimen of psychiatric treatment. She also sees a chiropractor at least twice a week.

Given the beating she’s taken, both during her long career and in the effort to get the benefits she says she’s due, you might think Hoffman has some regrets about being a stuntwoman, but she says that’s not the case.

“Would I do it again differently? I think the answer is no,” she said. “I would have been a stuntwoman every time. I’d still be in the entertainment industry. I love it.”