Steve Dent’s family has been supplying stunt horses to Hollywood for more than 70 years. But providing and training the equine stars of the spectacular chariot race for the new remake of Ben-Hur was one of his biggest challenges – and keeping them safe his highest priority.

Anyone who’s worked with Hollywood stars for any amount of time knows that their demands can verge on the surreal.

But the 80 or so A-listers currently residing on a farm just outside London, a handful of Polo mints and a vigorous post-work rubdown are pretty much all they ask for in the way of industry perks.

“We have the odd diva,” says Steve Dent, whose family has been supplying four-legged talent to the film industry since his grandfather founded the business in 1945. “But generally they’re pretty easy to keep happy.”

Dent has been working with horses for more than 40 years. His father moved into stuntwork after the performers who turned up to ride often turned out to be less than horse-friendly.

Safety first: Steve Dent ensures animals are looked after at all times on set Credit: ANDREW SHAYLOR

“Some stunt bloke would come in and say ‘I’m doing the fall off the horse’,” remembers Dent. “And he couldn’t even ride, it was just stupid. And dad was a good stuntman, so we did a couple of Bond films, but he couldn’t stand heights. A bit like me actually.”

Since then Steve has expanded the business even further, becoming one of the film industry’s leading stunt co-ordinators, directing the action for recent blockbusters such as Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) among many others. And it fell to him both to stunt co-ordinate and provide the horses and stunt-riders for the new big-budget remake of Ben-Hur.

To train a horse to fall, you start by teaching them to lie down. As long as the area is soft, they’ll always do it

“It was a massive job,” says Dent, putting his feet up in a pleasantly untidy office next to his beautifully kept stables. “We had 86 horses over there in Italy [where Ben-Hur’s chariot race scene was filmed], 32 on the track and spare teams to go on when they needed. We built a compound so the horses lived in stables on site and could walk straight from there to the arena. If there was a problem we could take them straight back to the stable.”

Ben-Hur’s chariot race sequence has in fact been staged twice previously. In 1924, stuntman B Reeves Eason marshalled 4,000 extras, more than 40 cameramen and hundreds of horses for what was one of the silent era’s most complex, spectacular action scenes.

But the completed sequence came at a terrible cost. Injuries, both animal and human, were a daily occurrence, and some estimates put the number of horses killed during shooting as high as 150. Maimed horses were not treated but simply destroyed where they fell.

Work experience: Dent has been working with horses for more than 40 years Credit: ANDREW SHAYLOR

By 1959, when Charlton Heston starred as the prince turned slave, things had got a little better – rumours persist that a small number of horses did die during the shoot though they have never been proven – but still techniques were used by legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt that would be unthinkable today, among them the notorious “running W”, a brutal device designed to trip horses mid-gallop.

“They would drill holes in the front horseshoes and run a wire up to the reins,” says Dent. “Then when the horse’s front feet were up mid-gallop the rider would pull and the horse’s feet would stay up. Or they’d gallop horses into pits that were about eight feet deep.”

Such techniques have long been outlawed, and these days horsemasters rely on careful training and all animal action is closely supervised by the American Humane Association.

“There’s always a soft area, you’ve always got a few pads on,” says Dent. “To train a horse to fall, you start by teaching them to lie down and go on from there. As long as the area is soft, they’ll always do it. But if you hurt them, then they’re not going to do it. If you see a horse going over in a movie, it’s always onto a bed about a foot or two deep with peat underneath it.”

And when it comes to the occasional director whose demands are unsafe for the animals, Dent has no problems using the power of the AHA.

“I’ve been in situations where a director is asking for something and I’ve said to the AHA person, ‘Just come over here and have a chat with him,’” says Dent. “They’re very powerful on set, they can close down the whole production if needs be. But the secret is never to just say no. I always try to provide a good, safe, alternative.”

If you see a horse going over in a movie, it’s always onto a bed about a foot or two deep with peat underneath it

While shooting Ben-Hur, Dent’s main concern was driverless carriages careering uncontrolled around the arena, putting both actors, stunt performers, and other horse teams at risk. “That was the big worry,” he says. “If a driver gets thrown you have four horses galloping flat out with a chariot with no brakes and no steering. Then all the other chariots have to get themselves out of that arena. Everything had to shut down while we let them go round and run themselves out and finally they go back to the stables.”

As for the film’s human stars, as with horses, it’s all a matter of temperament. “Toby Kebbell [who plays Messala Severus] had ridden a lot and worked with us before,” says Dent. “He really wanted to do a lot. We had to say, ‘Look be careful, because if it runs away from you, you’re screwed. We can’t have that happen.’ And so he was on it all the time.”

“Jack Huston, well perhaps a little less so,” laughs Dent. “At first Jack was a bit, ‘Well what on earth could go wrong?’ So I asked one of our guys to give him a bit of a run round the track. Just to give him an idea of it. When he got back he was kind of green and sweating. He was fine after that though.”

Watch the Ben-Hur trailer