After a career of braving heights, fires and car crashes on the big and small screens, she’s enjoying sharing a behind-the-scenes look into stunts with Trekkies, horror fanatics and film buffs.

Hoffman was one of the top stuntwomen in Hollywood in the 1980s and ’90s. With a warm, chatty personality, she has no problem digging into the million stories, anecdotes and stunts she lived through and sharing them — usually with an insight into human nature or a sudden punch line.

Her stunts have been features in major films and television shows, including “M.A.S.H.,” “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” “The Rockford Files,” “Remington Steele,” “Fantasy Island,” “CHiPs” and, of course, “Star Trek.”

She can be seen in “The Naked Gun” getting tackled across a banquet table, dressed as Queen Elizabeth II of England; being dropped on her head by Tim Curry and Christopher Lloyd in “Clue;” and rolling down a staircase as the Cardassian Mila in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

Saranac Laker Leslie Hoffman holds up a Freddy Krueger glove above a fan at a film convention. (Provided photo)

Probably her most well-known part was in Wes Craven’s 1984 “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” when she played a hall monitor who starts to resemble the serial killer Freddy Krueger. After character Nancy Thompson bumps into Hoffman’s character in the hallway, they share a few short lines of dialogue: “Where’s your pass?” “Screw your pass.” “Hey, Nancy! No running in the hallway.”

It was a short part, but it stuck with fans of the movie. Hoffman said people come up to her at conventions and recite the lines. It amazes her.

“I was in the movie for 19 seconds,” she exclaimed.

Hoffman reprised her role for the 2024 Winter Carnival “Creepy Carnival” parade — dressed as the hall monitor turning into Freddy Krueger in Paul Smith’s College float.

James Davidson, a talent agent from Northern Ireland, saw a picture from the parade, reached out to Hoffman and asked if she had representation. She did, but she wasn’t happy with her agent. In the previous 20 years she had been booked for five conventions. Since she got Davidson as her agent, she’s been to more than a dozen conventions in northern Ireland, Scotland and around the U.S. — with more planned in the future.

“He’s been amazing,” Hoffman said of Davidson.

Not a lot of stuntpeople do conventions, she said. Kane Hodder, who played Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise, is probably the most well-known, she said.

Davidson is a huge horror fan. He already had a tattoo of the knife Hoffman held in “Scream II” on one arm. He was shocked when she didn’t recognize it, which she got a kick out of. She hadn’t thought that much about the knife, she said. He has since gotten Freddy’s claws tattooed on his other arm.

Hoffman doesn’t even particularly like horror films.

“Too much blood,” she said.

What she likes is Star Trek. Hoffman said she’s an “original Trekkie.” She said she attended the second-ever Star Trek convention in New York City in the 1970s and placed third in a trivia contest.

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Behind the scenes

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At a convention in Scotland this past fall, Hoffman met a young girl who was dressed as her hall monitor character from “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” She got a picture with the girl, River, and her brother, Keon, who was dressed as Freddy. They were there with their mother, Cheryl.

Hoffman enjoys seeing people passing their love of movies down to the next generation. She especially gets a kick out of kids dressing as a character she played long before they were born.

Hoffman recalls director Wes Craven coming to her, looking very sad and telling her that her voice was going to be overdubbed by Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund when she says “Hey, Nancy! No running in the hallway.”

She didn’t care. As a stunt person, she said she was just happy to help make the movie.

Englund later told her his line was actually recorded in a small, dingy room across the country as he was filming a different movie in New York City.

Hoffman loves sharing behind-the-scenes stories and chatting with fellow movie-lovers.

Some people ask her what it was like working with Johnny Depp or Robert Englund, but she said she was never on set at the same time as them. What she can tell them is about how she, playing Queen Elizabeth II, flew 40 feet across a banquet table in “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!”

It took Leslie Nielsen’s stuntman seven takes to get the shot. Each time, he hit a mini-trampoline and knocked Hoffman onto the table. Then, lying on a tray with wheels with her legs flying all over in the air, the crew yanked on a cord connected to the tray under the tablecloth, sending the two of them zipping through fine china, champagne glasses and candelabras.

When the producers for the sitcom “The Love Boat” needed someone to jump off the top deck of the boat in the second episode of the show, they were struggling to find any stuntwomen who wanted to take the plunge. They called Hoffman and said they were considering putting a wig on a man to do the stunt. She felt that was wrong and said she’d be happy to do the jump. On the day of the shoot, she was told the water was 40 feet away. The next day, they called her up and let her know she had leapt 78 feet down into the water, with a stuntman falling right behind her.

Hoffman said, aside from the danger of the stuntman landing on her, the stunt was fine. She mentioned the Bluff Island cliffs on Lower Saranac Lake, which are a popular cliffdiving spot with up to a 70-foot drop.

“Locals jump off this bolder for free,” she said with a laugh. “I’m getting paid.”

She said the dangerous work of doing stunts is often taken for granted and that some directors and coordinators treat stuntpeople like they’re disposable or invincible.

On “Motel Hell,” she was supposed to drown the lead actress in a freezing pond. But the water was so cold, when the actress came up, she couldn’t breath and was gasping for air. The crew on the shore told her to “dunk her again.” Hoffman asked if she could and the actress hesitantly agreed. But after another dunk Hoffman realized the woman was getting hypothermic, so she waved the crew over to bring her to shore.

Afterwards, Hoffman said the stunt coordinator reprimanded her.

“You should have drowned her. She signed a contract,” she said he said.

Hoffman was the first stuntwoman elected to the Screen Actors’ Guild Board of Directors and became the chair of the stunt committee. She advocated for stuntwomen and stunt people of color to get more work. She said white men shouldn’t wear blackface or wigs to play parts women or people of color can.

She faced opposition in this and said she was blacklisted. When she tried to get the SAG pension and health plan to cover the lasting brain and physical injuries she suffered in her work, she was denied. She got a lawyer and headed into a legal battle for more than a decade. In 2021, she won after appealing the initial decision. It is rare for someone to win a lawsuit against SAG, she said.

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‘Never give up’

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Hoffman remembers watching movies for $0.25 at the Pontiac Theater in Saranac Lake. She doesn’t remember what movies, but she knew she wanted to be in them.

“From the first moment that I could retain a memory, I knew that I was going to be an entertainer,” she said.

She didn’t know it would be as a stuntperson. But, looking back, she remembers climbing trees and rolling down the stairs at her childhood home on Old Military Road. At the time, she didn’t realize her roughhousing was preparing her for her career.

Dorothy Sargent, who taught dance at the Odd Fellows Hall, gave Hoffman gymnastics lessons and she was the opening act for recitals at Petrova Elementary.

Her father did not believe in her ability to make a living in Hollywood, Hoffman said. It strained their relationship for several years.

He asked her how long she’d give herself to be successful. Ten years, she told him. He asked what she’d do if she hadn’t made it by then.

“Wait another 10 years,” she said.

It was her sole desire, her sole focus.

“Never give up. If you have a desire, follow it,” Hoffman said.

Eventually, as she got more stunt roles and her mother started telling the Enterprise to print when they were airing on TV or being shown in theaters, her father came around and even bragged to ticket-takers that his daughter was in the movie he was going to.

Two of her nephews have done writing and acting work in Hollywood, too.

Hoffman returned to Saranac Lake in 2016 and now lives at the Saranac Village at Will Rogers, the former National Vaudeville Artists’ Home sanatorium for actors with tuberculosis. She plans to continue traveling to conventions in 2026.