How Steven Seagal LOST IT ALL

on june 2002 anita bush walked to a car like on any other day when she got there she found that her windshield had a bullet hole in it along with a dead fish and a rose that had been placed on the car with a sign on the sign there was a single word stop a few months later two men in a mercedes would try to run her down right outside of her apartment bush was a los angeles times reporter at the time and this seemed to make it clear that she was close to something major something very powerful people didn't want to see come out in the public eye but she was working on two stories that seemed like they could warrant the response and wasn't sure which was the cause one was a story about the life and career of michael ovitz who had become one of the most powerful hollywood agents in town after founding the caa and his engagement in shady practices like having a fixer and private eye for dirt on rivals the other was a story about organized crime in the hollywood industry mob ties had long been suspected with actors producers directors and writers within the industry but bush was specifically investigating the ties into a specific figure action film actor steven seagal as it turned out the two stories were more connected than they would seem at first glance rewind back to 1990 if you're a fan of movies throughout the year you might have gone to see total recall die hard 2 pretty woman or home alone among all these though you might have seen not one but two movies starring up and coming action star steven seagal the self-proclaimed actor martial artist cia agent russian envoy and tibetan deity had an undeniably massive year in 1990 with both of his films released ending up in the top 30 highest grossing films of the year he had his oddities and a large ego but nothing that would immediately signal him as someone legitimately dangerous harmful or abusive and yet in a little over a decade saga would drop off the map as an action star and be remembered and considered only for ties to controversies and scandals how does an actor once compared to the likes of action stars like schwarzenegger and stallone end up investigated for mafia ties and tied up in multiple fbi investigations what really happened to steven seagal born in michigan on april 10 1952 segal moved to japan sometime in the early 1970s after training in the martial art of aikido under its original creator murahai ushiba and becoming the first westerner to run a dojo in japan he returned to the u.s in 1983 to open an aikido dojo in north hollywood at least that's what segal would have you believe in actuality the dojo he worked at while in japan was in fact owned by the family of his wife miyako fujitani and though he claimed to be trained by the founder of aikido himself murahai yoshiba passed away in 1969 and seagal's college enrollment records indicate that he didn't go to japan until at least 1971 making the claim slightly difficult to believe these were far from the only exaggerated accounts of his life that seagal would go on to tell over the course of his career in 1987 he started filming his first film above the law in which he plays an xcia agent trained in aikida as far as segal was concerned the role was almost borderline biographical since he claimed to be connected to the cia when he lived in japan he often told stories of meeting agents in the field meeting powerful people through his field agent investigations and claimed to have worked as the advisor or a security detail for the shah of iran egyptian prince anwar sadat and archbishop desmond tutu additionally when asked about a moment and above the law in which an agent is injected with a truth serum he said quote that's not made up that's something that really happened while cia policy is to not comment on the identity of operatives nearly everyone close to seagal has declared these claims unlikely adding to the oddity that was segal's persona as a rising film star rumor spread that the only reason saga managed to make his way into being in the film at all was due to his connection with michael ovitz the superstar hollywood agent who seemed to take a strangely personal stake in segal's film debut terry semel warner brothers president at the time was quoted saying michael has been one of steven's major supporters he went far beyond the role of just being stephen's agent in fact with the type of superstar client list michael has you wouldn't normally see him work so closely with a first-time actor sagar would say of the relationship michael and i are very close we love each other i'm like a guru to him the film also had julius nassau attached as a producer a man who would go on to serve as a producer for seagal for many years seagal's relationships with both nasa and ovitz will go on to end in a manner that could only be considered disastrous but in 1988 above the law was a hit and ovitz segal and nassau were all riding high saga quickly developed a public reputation for arrogance and poor professional relations a few cast members of saturday night live declared him the worst guest they had ever had a view series producer lorne michaels himself would go on to echo years later he also developed something of a rivalry with jean-claude van damme vocally dismissing the actor in interviews what do you think of his work as a martial artist first can't change the subject well i mean this was all in addition to accusations of segal's poor treatment of stunt workers which would follow him throughout his entire career regardless segal would go on to have a string of hits in the 90s and julius nasso attached his producer most notably under siege marked for death and fire down below there's a lasting idea of the hollywood star being untouchable as long as they make money for the executives and it seemed to hold true for segal at least for the time being the pair released the films under their own production studio segal nassau productions but it was this very same relationship that seemed to serve as the beginning of the downfall of sagal's career steven seagal has identified as a buddhist for most of his life including before he met nasso and started making movies in fact in 1997 he was declared a reincarnated lama a sacred vessel in tibetan buddhism by a buddhist spiritualist teacher in a move that made many buddhists question if he had quote bought the title through his extensive financial contributions around the same time nassau claimed that sagal's spiritual guru had questioned his decisions in making such violent action films and advised against it in 2000 segal seemed to take the advice seriously and decided to sever his relationship with nassau nassau however had already prepared four other action projects for segal and saw his move as an unacceptable breach of contract so he decided to call up some of his friends to persuade sago some friends in the new york mafia as it turns out nassau had connections to the gambino crime family one of new york's five major crime families in 2001 saga was forced into a car by reputed associates of the gambino family including julius nasso and his brother vincent they were taken to a restaurant in downtown brooklyn and greeted by the famed captain of the gambinos himself anthony chicony in an fbi wiretap recording dracconi could be heard laughing and bragging about scaring the action star wishing that he had a gun out so that it could be more like the movies a month later saga was visited by more gambino family associates at his home he reportedly paid out seven hundred thousand dollars to chiconi and nassau nassau later pleaded guilty to extortion conspiracy in 2003 and was sentenced to one year in prison saga would later go on to support a presidential pardon for nassau but never worked with him again professionally segal's relationship with ovitz around the same time didn't seem to be faring much better michael ovitz had resigned from the caa in 1995 to become president of disney under chairman michael eisner he was let go in 1997 after personal frustrations and rough company performance he will go on to form the investment group cke associates growing increasingly concerned about his rivals in companies such as universal all setting the stage for resident hollywood fixer and the bullet hole through anita bush's window in november of 2002 the fbi raided the office of one anthony pelicano known as the quote sin eater for his ability to make problems vanish pelicano was a notorious figure in hollywood a private investigator who was more than willing to resort to wiretaps identity theft and fraud for his clients of which there were many the raid was a response to the vandalized car of reporter anita bush for which pelicano was suspected for being responsible the suspicion was correct in the raid the fbi found homemade bombs and military-grade c4 that pelicano pleaded guilty to possessing illegally the incident snowballed massively from there all the way up to 2006 when pelicano will go on to be indicted on 110 counts of racketeering conspiracy wiretapping witness tampering identity theft and destruction of evidence his clients included the likes of michael jackson tom cruise don mctiernan and gary shandling along with michael ovitz and what's more michael ovitz himself implicated none other than steven seagal as another client in his filed court documents ovitz would later admit to paying pelicano at least 150 000 for information he could use to his advantage against figures such as universal studios president ron meyer dreamworks co-founder david geffen and anita bush michael ovitz was sued separately to pelicano by bush though the trial never made it to court the court documents that ovitz filed detailing his potential defense made it clear that he would argue that it was in fact sagal who had orchestrated the dead fish threat on bush's car and ovitz intended to make that part of his defense to deny his responsibility in the act it's unclear what ovitz and seagal's relationship is currently like but given that ovitz seemed completely willing to throw sagal under the bus to save his own skin it's not difficult to make a guess by this time most would consider seagal's career to be dead he disappeared from the public consciousness after a short stint in the 90s and it's true that he would never have a theatrical hit film again however he continued to have a prolific film career in the form of direct to video films and even reality tv series he starred in the tv series steven seagal lawman where he served as a deputy in the jefferson parish sheriff's office and while he hasn't released in the past few years since 2019 he had released over 20 in the decade prior to that including seven films in 2016 two of his films since 2000 have zero percent ratings on rotten tomatoes while most don't even have enough reviews to even have ratings he does have at least one fan though vladimir putin in fact after years of praising the russian government saga was granted russian citizenship by putin in 2014 he called vladimir putin quote one of the greatest world leaders if not the greatest world leader alive today he also made a statement declaring that he considered the annexation of crimea by russia to be a totally reasonable act he was a guest at russia's 2015 victory day parade and visited bella russian president alexander lukashenko in 2018 vladimir putin declared sagal a cultural envoy to ease tensions between the united states and russia suffice it to say i think he's been unsuccessful so far it's not entirely clear what the cultural envoy role is supposed to be except whatever this means to kind of try to get people to have meaningful conversations and meaningful meetings where we're open to at least try to communicate in a fashion where we can get closer and closer together and and not further and further apart sagal also fled to the country from the united states to avoid paying a 330 thousand dollar fine to the securities and exchange commission for failing to disclose that he had paid to promote a cryptocurrency bitcoin 2gen the fleeing was ultimately unsuccessful as a method of avoiding the fine and the individuals behind the currency were charged with fraud it's easy when discussing steven seagal to fall into open silly mockery at first glance in many ways steven sengal seems like something of a harmless source of entertainment a kind of crazy nut that everyone seems to have a fun story about like one of many other quirky weird actors in hollywood but the truth about the man appears to be much more sinister according to dozens of accusations against him his ridiculous claims of assertions painting him as some one-of-a-kind adonis when contrasting with the reality of his accomplishments paints an amusing picture of delusions of grandeur and one hell of an insatiable ego but seagal's history is in many ways indicative of all of the rampant abuse and mistreatments hollywood exemplifies fosters and allows in the name of the bottom line and treating sagal purely as a punchline like so many do can often obscure a lot of the more horrifying details about him and ignores the real harm that he has caused for the serious steven segal lawman seagal worked with sheriff joe arpaio to conduct a raid on the home of a man suspected of running a cockfighting ring he did so by driving a tank through the man's front gate accompanied by police in full riot gear even though the suspect had no history of weapons ownership and was alone in the home over a hundred chickens were euthanized on the spot and the suspect alleged that seagal killed his family's puppy during the raid in addition to thousands of dollars in property damage and the cost of the mass raid operation itself interestingly sheriff joe arpaio himself a bit of a controversial figure was not seagal's usual collaborator on the series that would be sheriff newell noman of jefferson parish who segal worked with as a deputy for the majority of the series according to seagal in an episode of the reality series he was quote on the loan from louisiana for sheriff arpaio in actuality however seagal had recently resigned from the jefferson parish police force the cause of his resignation the lawsuit filed by kaiden newyan accused the actor of singapore and attempting to keep nguyen who had applied to a job as his personal assistant as a failed she alleged that he kept other personal assistants at rails in a secluded house and that she was repeatedly discouraged from leaving the home including at gunpoint the lawsuit was later dismissed but seagal chose to resign from the jefferson parish police rather than face an internal investigation as it turns out the lawsuit is consistent with a long list of delegations that span nearly his entire career and almost all tell a similar story actress catherine heigl spoke about an encounter with segal when he claimed to have underage women as girlfriends seemingly as a poorly veiled proposition to her later an image was shown of segal seemingly posing while touching heigl's breast she was 16 years old at the time in 1991 he was accused by warner brothers employees rayne malone nicole sellinger and christine keeve of stems leading to an out of court settlement jenny mccarthy recalled sagal asking for her to undress during an audition for under siege 2. she stated that when she pointed out that the role had no nudity he remarked quote there's off-camera duty when she began to cry and ran out sagal followed he reportedly followed her all the way to her car warning her not to tell anyone of what she had just witnessed she later remarked of the experience quote i was the last girl he saw that day how many girls had to take off their clothes how many girls had to do more actress juliana margelis alleges she was contacted by a casting agent when she was just 23 years old and told to meet seagal in his hotel bedroom she was told that the casting agent would also be present when margellas got there however it was only seagal when she sat down to discuss the scene he pulled out a gun from under the cushion after a brief uncomfortable conversation she ran out of the room he read my palm and told me that he was a healer and that i had that i had weak kidneys it was so awful and hilarious that i just sort of stood up and i went well that was fun thanks about the kidneys gotta go and i just ran for the door she credits the experience with educating her enough to avoid a similar encounter with harvey weinstein years later portia de rossi had a chillingly similar account when she accused segal of exposing himself to her during the so-called audition in his office in 2002 saying that quote he told me how important it was to have chemistry offscreen as he sat me down and unzipped his leather pants when she ran out and told her agent the story her agent just responded quote well i didn't know if he was your type her experience details an industry problem where sui belushkas was treated as an accepted hurdle of reaching career goals and her own agent the person supposed to be on her side in the industry didn't even have the decency to warn her about what could happen the accusations against steven seagal paint the consistent compelling picture of persistent spanning years there are repeated stories of him using the guise of auditions and chemistry as tricks to draw women into isolated locations that he could use to assault him for a lot of his career he served as lead actor producer and sometimes director of his own projects leading to a massive amount of control over productions of his films and as a result a massive amount of power over aspects of the film such as casting this allowed him free reign and centralized power that he allegedly exploited for decades to assault dozens of women as more and more cases about rampant corruption and criminal dealings are exposed in hollywood every year one thing is abundantly clear steven seagal is far from alone in his actions or connections saga may have tied himself up with russia but many of the people he was once involved with are still very much in hollywood michael ovitz now works as an advisor to companies in silicon valley julius nassau was still producing films as late as 2019 and anthony pelicano was himself recently released from prison in march 2019. he reportedly had a slush fund in the six-figure range from former clients provided as payment for silence he's now back in business as a fixer or as he calls it quote crisis manager in one form or another all of the players that form the conspiratorial web are still around and most of them are back doing almost exactly what they were doing before consequences for the wealthy were as always at worst non-existent and at best temporary

Channel: Steven Strangles People

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Keywords: steven seagal, What happened to Steven Seagle (The American Actor) after his early success?, The Dark Side Of Steven Seagal, Rise and Fall of Steven Seagal, How Steven Seagal Became Hollywoods Most Hated Man, steven strangles people, steven williams, aikido, aikido founder morihei ueshiba, michael ovitz, gambino family, gambino crime family, mafia, crime and corruption, darkside of hollywood, martial arts, steven seagal fight scenes, steven seagal lies, steven seagal aikido

Id: itlaw88glc4

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 30 2022