Steven Seagal
Every Seagal movie features his character as a humble, soft-spoken guy who just gets pushed too far, to the point that he has to go on an ass-kicking rampage, standing up for the little guy with each arm he breaks.—Cracked.com, discussing one of Seagals more infamous kills.
Actor, producer, writer, musician, activist, 7th-dan black belt in aikido, reserve deputy sheriff, father of seven, Buddhist and guardian (legally and literally) of the only child of the 10th Panchen Lama of Tibet. According to That Other Wiki he was also the first foreigner to operate an aikido dojo in Japan.
For the last few decades the pony-tailed star has made his way across dozens of movies since his late eighties introduction in Above the Law. His films largely consist of him taking on dozens of mooks singlehandedly and eventually killing the the Big Bad in brutal fashion. Several times over.
After the success of his first movie Seagal went on to make box office hits Hard to Kill, Marked for Death and Out for Justice. Securing his place as a top action star during the late 80's and early 90's. The apex of his success came with his most well known movie Under Siege. Unfortunately this proved to be the beginning of the end of his big box office success. The 1994 film On Deadly Ground was a pet project of the actor, with a large budget and even an all-star cast. Co-produced, directed and starring Steven Seagal, the movie was an Anvilicious environmental crusade against evil oil companies. Unfortunately it was slammed for its broken morals and the seemingly endless rants his "character" went on.
Despite Under Siege 2 being successful, Seagal's movies rapidly declined in financial success. Eventually by the late 90's he was relegated to "direct-to-video" and remained there for nearly a decade. He made a proposal to have American releases of Tony Jaa's Thai smash-hit Ong Bak re-cut with him in the prologue and epilogue as the Mighty Whitey who trained him into a Mauy Thai master, but the idea was rejected. Recently seen in the reality tv show Steven Seagal: Lawman and making his return to the big screen in 2010 as the main villain of Robert Rodriguez's Machete. He also recorded two albums: a debut "Songs from the Crystal Cave" and straight blues "Mojo Priest". He also created and co-wrote many episodes of the TV series True Justice (starring guess who).
Notable Works:
- Above the Law
- A Dangerous Man
- Attack Force
- Belly Of The Beast
- Black Dawn
- Born To Raise Hell
- Driven To Kill
- Executive Decision
- Exit Wounds
- Fire Down Below
- The Glimmer Man
- Half Past Dead
- Hard to Kill
- Flight Of Fury
- Kill Switch
- Into The Sun
- Machete
- Marked for Death
- Mercenary For Justice
- On Deadly Ground
- Out For A Kill
- Out for Justice
- Out of Reach
- Pistol Whipped
- The Foreigner
- The Keeper
- The Patriot
- Today You Die
- Shadow Man
- Steven Seagal: Lawman
- Submerged
- Ticker
- Under Siege & Under Siege 2
- Urban Justice