"When I was a kid, I would wrap a green towel around my legs and swim in the pool," said Pascoe, an only child. "I thought I was a mermaid." She would eventually double for one in "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides."

SAG 2013: Winners | Show highlights | Complete list | Red carpet

Her best friend talked her into joining the high school diving team. Pascoe didn't win any state diving championships, but she was good enough to attend Millersville University in Pennsylvania on a diving scholarship.

"I loved diving," Pascoe said. "The higher I went, the better."

Through her college diving coach, she landed a summer job performing high dives at an Amish-themed amusement park in Lancaster, Pa., called Dutch Wonderland. As part of its "aqua circus," she would dive from an 80-foot-high platform into a 12-foot circular pool that was 10 feet deep.

"What made me a good high fall diver was training all those years to hit your mark," she said.

At 24 she became the first woman to win the Acapulco Cliff Diving Championship, held in Mexico. The 90-foot dive was especially difficult because Pascoe had to jump out far enough to avoid the rocky shoreline below.

A television producer saw footage of the competition and was so impressed he hired Pascoe to jump from an 80-foot cliff on Catalina Island as a stunt for a show called "Worst Case Scenarios."

"I hit the water so hard I had bruises for days," she said.

She earned $3,500 for the job, received her Screen Actors Guild membership card and soon found more work on movies and television shows. She would double for actresses Reese Witherspoon, Anna Paquin, Elisha Cuthbert and Holly Hunter.

PHOTO: Peril on the set - Celebrity injuries

Pascoe has won several awards for her feats, including sharing the coveted Taurus Award in 2011 for a stunt in the movie "Predators," in which she leaped from an 80-foot cliff in Hawaii, doing a double flip turn and a half twist before plunging into the ocean.

Her highest fall to date was from an oil rig off the coast of Santa Barbara for an episode of the TV drama "Alias." Pascoe, acting as a stunt double for actress Amy Acker, leaped off a platform to evade a spray of simulated machine gun fire and dropped 115 feet into the ocean.

It was so high up, Pascoe couldn't judge how far down the water was. She asked that a jet ski be placed in the water so she could see the surface of the ocean and time her landing.

"When I jumped all I could think of was looking at that jet ski," she said. "If you miss your landing by one second, it feels like hitting concrete."

She learned how to cope with unexpected physical sensations and sounds that she experienced from high fall stunts.

"I never noticed the sound of the wind until I was 70 feet or higher. The first time it happened it almost scared me. I took off and I said, 'What's the sound?' It sounds like a gust of wind blowing through the street when all the leaves flutter."

Then there's the feeling of becoming a human torpedo.

PHOTOS: Hollywood Backlot moments

"You can almost feel when you're going faster. Your stomach goes up against your chest," Pascoe said.