Seagalogy - Facts about Steven Seagal
After more than five years in the making, Vern presents 'Seagalogy', an in-depth study of the world's only aikido instructor turned movie star/director/writer/blues guitarist/energy drink inventor — the ass-kicking auteur, Steven Seagal. Learn some great Seagalogical facts!
- Throughout his films Seagal has made weapons of a skewer, sand, a microwave, a pylon, a table saw, a sausage, a bar towel, a pool cue, a pan, a rolling pin, a corkscrew, a decorative rope, a tusk, a tree, an empty 2-liter bottle, a helicopter blade, a pipe, a cable, concentrated coconut oil, lighter fluid, a flare gun, a credit card, a bulldozer blade, a telephone, some lumber, a wine glass, a kerosene lamp, a CD, a phonograph, a chair leg, a ceremonial wooden club, a barber's smock, chopsticks, a faucet, urinals, a metal pole, and a fork.
- Some of Seagal's distinguished co-stars have included Academy Award® winners Tommy Lee Jones (Under Siege), Michael Caine (On Deadly Ground), Billy Bob Thornton (On Deadly Ground), and Halle Berry (Executive Decision), as well as Academy Award® nominees Sharon Stone (Above the Law), Gary Busey (Under Siege), Kris Kristofferson (Fire Down Below), Dennis Hopper (Ticker) and Imelda Staunton (Shadow Man). Even before acting he was a martial arts coordinator for Oscar® winner Sean Connery on Never Say Never Again, during which he is said to have broken Connery's wrist.
- Most of Seagal's characters are cops, intelligence agents or soldiers. However, he has also played a doctor, a rogue corporate firefighter, an EPA agent, a thief, and a professor of Chinese archaeology at Yale.
- Although Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme have never appeared in a film together, they have shared a stunt: the same shot of a stuntman rappelling was used as Van Damme in 2001's The Order and as Seagal in 2005's Today You Die.
- One of Seagal's special talents is to injure someone's body part in such a way that they are forced to yell something about that body part. In Out For Justice in particular he causes people to yell "Motherfucker you knocked my teeth out!," "You took my leg!" and "My balls! My balls! Balls!"
- Although Seagal is known for his environmentalism, he has only done two movies with an ecologically-themed plot (On Deadly Ground and Fire Down Below). The most common theme in his movies is corruption within intelligence and police agencies.
- Seagal's movies are a boon to the sugar glass industry; in The Glimmer Man alone there are nine separate occurrences of characters jumping through or being thrown through windows.
Seagalogy is published by Titan Books on 23rd May 2008, priced £9.99.
