Steven Seagal Biography

Steven Seagal (born April 10, 1951) is an action movie actor and a 7th dan black belt in aikid.
Steven Seagal was born in Lansing, Michigan to a Jewish father Stephen (a high school math teacher), and Irish Catholic mother Patricia (an emergency room technician). In his youth, he relocated to Fullerton, California and began studying the martial arts under the direction of renowned shito-ryu karate master Fumio Demura and aikido under Rod Kobayashi the President of the Western States Aikido Federation.
***

***
In his late teens, Seagal became part of Demura's Karate Demonstration Team and performed daily demonstrations in the former Japanese Village and Deer Park, in Southern Californina. In 1974 he was promoted by Kobayashi Sensei to Shodan in Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido.

As far as other information from his early years, he graduated from Buena Park High School in Buena Park, California, and held one of his first jobs at a Burger King. Some sources say that he attended college at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California, as well as Fullerton College in Fullerton. This information contradicts other sources, which say Seagal left America for Japan at the age of 17 to study aikido. Whatever actually happened remains unclear, due to Seagal's secrecy on the matter.

During a seminar in Southern California, he met Miyako Fujitani, whom he later married. Fujitani's mother owned an aikido dojo, the Tenshin Dojo in Osaka. It can at least be confirmed that Seagal had moved to Japan around the time of his marriage, and changed affiliation from Koichi Tohei's Ki Society and Shin Shin Toitsu Aikdo to the Hombu Aikikai and was promoted from Shodan (1st degree) to Yondan (4th degree).

After spending 15 years in Japan, Seagal returned to the United States where he opened the Tenshin Bugei Gakuen in 1982, after the Dojo where he trained in Japan.

Seagal's first venture into the film industry occurred when he was hired as the stunt co-ordinator for the 1982 film The Challenge, starring Toshiro Mifune. This was around the same time Seagal returned to the United States more than a decade after he left, in order to pursue a career in the film industry. Following the challenge, he worked as a stunt co-ordinator for the 1983 James Bond film, Never Say Never Again.

Seagal's acting career took off when, by chance, Michael Ovitz, the then president of one of the most powerful talent agencies in Hollywood, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), came to Seagal's Aikido Studio in Burbank, California and became his student. Ovitz, who was very supportive of Seagal’s acting ambitions, personally financed a screen test for Seagal around 1987. Warner Brothers Pictures, who was looking to capitalize on the profitability of action stars at the time, were impressed by what they saw and signed him to a 4-picture contract.

From there, Seagal began work on his first film, Above the Law (also known as Nico in the United Kingdom and Europe), with director Andrew Davis. In it, Seagal played Nico, a vice squad cop in Chicago who becomes suspicious when suspects in a drug raid are set free and Nico is asked to resign from his position. The film, which heavily relied on Seagal’s martial arts fight sequences was a hit, and he quickly became a favorite among action fans.

Following the success of Above the Law, Seagal made three more pictures (Hard to Kill, Marked for Death, and Out for Justice) that were modest box office hits, but finally found mainstream success in 1992, with the release of Under Siege. The film, which reunited Seagal with Andrew Davis, was a blockbuster in America and abroad, and ultimately confirmed Seagal’s place among action stars.

Riding high on the success Under Siege brought him, Seagal next made his directorial debut with On Deadly Ground, playing a martial artist/environmental agent who tries to single-handedly save Alaska from an evil oil corporation. The movie, which Seagal used to stress the issues of pollution and environmental waste, was a failure with audiences and financially, and hurt his career. He tried to recover with a sequel to Under Siege (titled Dark Territory) in 1995, and a cop drama (The Glimmer Man) in 1996, but both fell short of expectations. Following his first supporting role in Kurt Russell’s Executive Decision, he tried once again to make an environmentally-conscious film with 1997’s Fire Down Below. This time playing an EPA agent fighting industrialists dumping toxic waste in the Kentucky hills region, it was once again a failure commercially.

The next year, he would make The Patriot, another environmental thriller which was his first direct-to-video release in the United States (though it was released theatrically in most of the world). After taking a couple years off to produce The Prince of Central Park, a more gentle film, Seagal’s career had something of a resurgence in 2001 with the release of Exit Wounds, which although had few martial arts fighting Seagal fans were accustomed to, was a surprise commercial success. The renewed success however, was short-lived, as his next two projects, Ticker and Half Past Dead, failed with audiences.

With the failure of those two films, Seagal’s career has since gone into decline. As of December 2005, every film he has made since 2003 has been released direct-to-video in North America, with only limited theatrical releases in the rest of the world. These movies are routinely criticized by both fans and detractors alike as being of poor overall quality, and will often question whether or not he really has his heart into making movies anymore. He is, however, due to return to theaters in late 2005, with a cameo appearance in The Onion Movie, a film based on the satirical newspaper of the same name. Although he has not seen much success in this period, he did star in a US Mountain Dew commercial in 2003/2004 in which he parodied his tough-guy persona, and was well-received.

Seagal has produced many of the movies that he stars in, and has also participated in writing and direction. Seagal's roles do not fit the standard action hero archetype; instead, Seagal's characters are usually 'born perfect,' displaying no limitations, character flaws, or character development (as typically included in the story arc for most action heroes). Instead, Seagal's characters are often associated with attributes given to action movie antagonists or villains; eg. clandestine government associations (Under Siege), great wealth and high-level corporate ties (On Deadly Ground), high-level biochemical research skill (The Patriot), etc. Seagal's characters always hold all the cards, and cannot be beaten or even slowed down. This perfect, unaccessable protagonist is often hard for audiences to relate to, and can partially explain his lack of cinema-debuting movies in recent years.
In addition to acting and aikido, Seagal also plays the guitar, songs of which can be found featured in several of his movies (such as Fire Down Below and Ticker). In 2005, he released his first album, Songs from the Crystal Cave, which has a mix of pop, world, and blues music. It also features duets with Tony Rebel, Lt. Stichie, Lady Saw, and Stevie Wonder. One of his album tracks, Girl It's Alright, was released as a single in parts of the world and has gone as far as being made into a music video. The soundtrack to Seagal's 2005 film Into the Sun features several songs from the album.

Seagal has gained some notoriety for being a bigamist. When he left his first wife Miyako Fujitani when he left Japan to go back to America (reportedly, Steven's last words to her were,"You are crazy; I want a divorce"), he married former Days of Our Lives actress Adrienne La Russa, despite his divorce to Fujitani not yet being finalized. It was during his marriage to La Russa that he met actress/model Kelly LeBrock, whom he began a relationship with, and eventually LeBrock became pregnant with his child. When news of this came about, Seagal's marriage to La Russa was annulled, and he then married LeBrock in September 1987. Their marriage lasted until 1994, when LeBrock filed divorce papers citing "irreconciable differences". This can be more or less attributed to the affair Seagal had with Arrissa Wolf, who was hired to be a nanny to Seagal and Lebrock's children. Although he still has a relationship with Wolf, they have never announced intentions to get married.

Seagal has six children from three of the four relationships he's been involved in. With Fujitani, he had a son, Kentaro (b. 1976), and a daughter, Ayako (b. 1980). His three children with LeBrock included two daughters Annaliza (b. 1987) and Arrissa (b. 1993), as well as as a son, Dominic (b. 1990). Seagal and Wolf have one daughter, Savannah (b. 1996).

STEVEN SEAGAL PICTURES

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

STEVEN SEAGAL BIOGRAPHY