"As you can imagine, I was pretty ecstatic when I won the award," Button told the Weekend Herald. "I first found out about it via a Facebook message from a friend of mine, Brett Sheerin, he was going to the awards in LA so I had asked him to accept and deliver a short thank-you speech I had written on the off chance that I was to win, seeing as I couldn't make it over due to work commitments in the Gold Coast.
"The awards were also my Dad's birthday, so that was a nice bonus as well. It really is great to get recognition from my peers with this award and it certainly won't hurt my career."
The award was judged by members of the stunt community who agreed Button's work was the best of the best in 2014.
Button is the third individual Kiwi stunt performer to win this prestigious award.
Stuntman Sean Button won the Taurus Stunt Award for a scene in Fury where he set himself on fire and simulated shooting himself.
Ben Cooke won in 2007 for Best High Work doubling Daniel Craig as James Bond in
Casino Royale
. Incidentally, Cooke was Button's stunt co-ordinator and was in charge of setting up and overseeing the safety of his award-winning stunt on
Fury
.
Zoe Bell, who rose to fame as Uma Thurman's stunt double in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill series, has won three times — twice for her work on Kill Bill and again for Grindhouse, also produced by Tarantino.
Button is currently working on the Gold Coast on the latest film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
He has previously worked in a string of blockbuster movies including The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies and King Kong.
According to his online biography, his capabilities include stunt fighting, martial arts and weaponry, fight choreography, car hits, horse hits and drags, high falls and fire burns — both full and partial.
