The Akira Kurosawa movie Steven Seagal said was about him: “I am a warrior”
Few actors have ever gotten as high on their own supply as Steven Seagal. The martial artist and actor has always been his own biggest fan, and that extends to the laws of physics and the rules of time and space being bent to his will to back up his belief that one of Akira Kurosawa’s many classics is all about him.
On one hand, that’s exactly the sort of thing people would expect Seagal to say. The lines between fact and fiction have always been blurred when the straight-to-video savant talks about his own life, even if those in the know – including his own mother – hinted that he might be telling porkies half the time.
Most people who’ve had the misfortune of working with Seagal hate the guy, but he probably doesn’t care because he’ll never love anyone as much as he loves himself. Still, there are several questions raised by his steadfast belief that the legendary auteur subconsciously channelled the life Seagal would lead despite the Aikido master only being 13 years old when the film in question was released.
It’s an understatement, but some of the facts don’t check out. “Me, I’m Asian,” Seagal told Rotten Tomatoes. “I was raised in Asia, and to be honest with you, my favourite films of all time are really Kurosawa films. He was a friend of mine.” Right, there’s a bit to unpack here.
Seagal, who was born in Michigan to a medical technician and a maths teacher, wasn’t raised in Asia. He was brought up in California and didn’t move to Japan until he was in his early 20s, and he was back on home soil a decade later when he opened a dojo in Hollywood.
Was he friends with Kurosawa? It’s hard to say with 100% certainty that they weren’t, but there isn’t any evidence that definitively proves they were. He was the martial arts coordinator on Toshiro Mifune’s 1982 feature The Challenge, though, so there’s a tangential connection at the very least.
“Red Beard is one of the most important movies in my life because it’s… I don’t want to say it’s a movie about me,” Seagal began before immediately explaining how it was a movie about him. “It’s a movie about someone I tried to emulate subconsciously – or, accidentally, I should say – in that I am a martial artist, I am a healer, and I am a warrior, and those are the three kind of components that really make up Toshiro’s kind of character, you know?”
Steven Seagal: martial artist, healer, warrior, the reincarnation of a Tibetan monk, the brains behind Tommy Lee Jones winning an Academy Award for The Fugitive, the man who deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for predicting the future, a law enforcement officer, and the living embodiment of Mifune’s Red Beard protagonist. Is there anything he can’t do?
