Steven Seagal

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Lore & Background

Steven Frederic Seagal was born on April 10, 1952, in Lansing, Michigan, to a mother of Irish descent and a Jewish father whose own parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Seagal has claimed paternal ancestry from Vladivostok, Belarus, and Saint Petersburg, as well as Yakut and Buryat heritage via genetic testing. As a child, he was frail and suffered from asthma before his family moved to Fullerton, California, when he was five. He attended Buena Park High School and later Fullerton College. Seagal has been described as prone to making exaggerated or fabricated statements about his life; for instance, he claimed to have studied under aikido founder Morihei Ueshiba, though Ueshiba died when Seagal was 17, five years before he moved to Japan. He relocated to Japan in 1974 to avoid the Vietnam War draft by marrying a Japanese national, Miyako Fujitani, a second-degree black belt. He taught at her family’s dojo and earned his aikido black belt in 1978, though Fujitani stated the awarding judge was asleep during his presentation. Seagal became the first non-Japanese and American to operate an aikido dojo in Japan. He later claimed to have trained CIA agents and fought yakuza, but Fujitani refuted these claims, and no evidence supports them. Fujitani funded his return to the United States, where he opened dojos in New Mexico and California. He worked as a fight coordinator on *The Challenge* and *Never Say Never Again* before making his acting debut in *Above the Law* (1988), the first American film featuring aikido in fight sequences. Seagal is a 7th-dan black belt and shihan in Aikikai aikido.

Reader's Guide

Steven Seagal is an American actor, producer, screenwriter, martial artist, and musician who holds a 7th-dan black belt and the title of shihan in Aikikai aikido. He began his adult life as a martial arts instructor in Japan, where he became the first non-Japanese and American to operate an aikido dojo. After moving to Los Angeles, he continued teaching aikido before making his acting debut in 1988 with *Above the Law*, which is regarded as the first American film to feature aikido in fight sequences. By 1991, he had starred in three commercially successful films, and his role as Navy SEAL counter-terrorist expert Casey Ryback in *Under Siege* (1992) brought him greater fame; he reprised this role in the sequel *Under Siege 2: Dark Territory* (1995). In 1994, he made his directorial debut with *On Deadly Ground*. During the latter half of the 1990s, his career shifted largely to direct-to-video productions, though he later appeared as the main villain in Robert Rodriguez’s *Machete* (2010) and starred in the reality show *Steven Seagal: Lawman*, which depicted him performing duties as a reserve deputy sheriff. Seagal is also a guitarist who has released two studio albums and performed on the scores of several of his films, collaborating with artists such as Stevie Wonder and Tony Rebel. He has been involved in marketing therapeutic oil products and energy drinks, and is an environmentalist and animal rights activist. In 2004, he was inducted into the Martial Arts History Museum Hall of Fame. Seagal has faced multiple accusations of sexual harassment or assault since 1991. A supporter of Vladimir Putin, he backed the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and was granted Russian and Serbian citizenship in 2016. In 2018, he was appointed Russia’s special envoy to the U.S.

Did You Know?

• Seagal directed Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), in which Katherine Heigl played a 16-year-old hostage named Sarah.
• In the film, Heigl's character Sarah travels by train through the mountains with her uncle Casey Ryback (Seagal) to visit her deceased father's grave.
• Heigl worked opposite Morris Chestnut, Sandra Taylor, and Everett McGill in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.