And he says one-legged and one-armed actors have a leg up on other actors when the scene calls for a limb to be ripped from a body.

But disabled stunt actors don’t just fall into that line of work. They need proper training, which Smith provides at his Stunts-Ability school.

However, the movie business is hand-to-mouth – even for those who are missing a hand – and Smith found that out recently when he was approached about working on the upcoming “Pirates Of The Caribbean” sequel, “Dead Man’s Chest.”

Smith says he was offered a chance to portray a pirate in the Johnny Depp-Orlando Jones blockbuster, but declined because the filmmakers only wanted to pay him $80 a day as an extra.

That’s chump change to a professional stuntman and Smith figures he’s worth more since, most likely, he would be used in action scenes where a prosthetic limb would be ripped off his body.

The running, jumping and working with blood squibs has its risks, and it pains Smith that just because he’s missing a limb, the industry is severing his pay as well.

Smith says he chose to retire rather than deal with the indignity of a salary cut, and wishes more filmmakers would be like Steven Spielberg, who gave him a full salary when he worked on “A.I. “

But Smith isn’t giving up the work entirely. He currently lives in San Diego where he trains other “limb- deficient” people how to do stunts with his own school, Stunts-Ability.

Smith has trained both aspiring actors and ``limb deficient’’ folks who simply want to test their boundaries and says some of his students get a kick simply being shot with fake bullets.

These days, Smith isn’t working with just folks who are missing legs or arms. He is trying to reach kids who have all their body parts but are missing something else in their lives.

Later this year, he plans to take both disabled and non-disabled kids between ages 14 and 18 to a camp where they will be trained in stunts and various Native American rites of passage, all the while coming to terms with each other and breaking down the social barriers between themselves.

For more information, check out www.stuntsability.com.

David Moye is a Vyuz editor and resident of La Mesa.