The transcript below is from the video “The demise of Steven Seagal’s career” by Cinemash.

Cinemash:

Steven Seagal had been a successful businessman before hitting the big screens. He had his Aikido club which visited the various producers and heads of Hollywood studios. That is, he got into a great movie through the right connections. For the initial success, Steven had to make efforts one way or another. The rise of Seagal’s career was meteoric. To get into the list of the highest-paid actors, he needed only 5 films. Today, I would like to talk about the career of Steven Seagal.

Cinemash:

The first movie job for the actor was the action movie Above The Law. To get a role in this film, Steven had to demonstrate his level of training in studio Warner. People from the studio were impressed by how Seagal packs opponents on the tatami and therefore decided to take him on their project although Seagal later admitted that it was a pre-arranged performance.

Cinemash:

After the film’s release, there was a real Aikido boom in America. The film’s success forced Seagal to choose a career as an actor. So he decided to sell his business assets. The actor spent a long time pouring over scripts searching for a new project as he wanted to build on his initial success. His choice fell on Hard to Kill and he did not go wrong. The success of the film was phenomenal. Steven woke up famous with a budget of $10 million, it grossed $50 million at the box office only in America. This was followed by two more box office successes of the actor in the action films Marked for Death and Out for Justice.

Cinemash:

Mark for Death was by the way recognized as the most violent action movie of Seagal’s career. In general, each new film actor collected in cinemas box office exceeds the final result of the previous band. In this respect, only the rise of the famous Jean-Claude Van Damme is comparable to Seagal. The beginning of the end for the actor was Under Siege. Steven was convinced that success was now with him forever after the film grossed $156 million at the box office and he decided to try himself in the director’s chair. 2 Hollywood studios were interested in the opportunity.

Cinemash:

20th Century studios offered to participate in Man of Honor, which tells about the war between the protagonists and the Italian mafia. The studio offered Seagal complete creative control of directors and producers chair but the budget was limited to $30 million and the film had to be made from an already completed script. The other studio was Warner. It offered the same thing, only Steven could choose any script. The estimated budget for the new film was about $40 million. He agreed to star in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory and chose a script form his directorial debut.

Cinemash:

The choice fell on the film The Invisible Warrior, which later became On Deadly Ground. Shooting the film was a disaster. Steven was constantly making changes to the script, fighting with stunt performers, and quarreling with his friends. The film’s budget rose to $50 million during filming, an amount rather large for the 90s. After unsuccessful test screenings, the studio demanded that the timing be reduced by 30 minutes. The failure was deafening at the box office. The film only managed to earn $39 million and in addition, Steven Seagal won a Golden Raspberry as the worst director. Warner Studios decided to withdraw the movie from international distribution so as not to lose any more money. Maybe Seagal should have saved to high-budget movies but the second part of Under Siege did not live up to expectations. Perhaps the movie would have been a slightly. To continue, his biggest hit took very seriously in this movie.

Cinemash:

Steven Seagal first started using a belly-flattening belt. The actor still managed to get into editing the film and is completely at odds with the director and producers. Put the final word on the status of Seagal as a superstar in 1995, the actor was accused of domestic violence and also poured on his allegations of sexual harassment. After similar news, Kurt Russell, who also had a role in the film executive decision, refused to work with Seagal.

Most likely, if not because Seagal had two failures in a row behind him. Seagal’s two failures in a row, the studio would have turned a blind eye to these scandals. In the end, the Steven Seagal character in the film was quickly killed. All these events greatly undermined the career of our hero. In big-budget films, he no longer starred and other films in his participation failed one after another.

Cinemash:

Steven began to appear in mediocre action films published on video a few years later. To get out of there, he was able only once in the movie machete by Robert Rodriguez. The actor, like many others, was ruined by an inflated sense of self-importance. Realizing where his career was going, he stopped watching himself and by the end of the 90s did not fit on the screen. Last year, the actor almost did not shoot, which is generally explainable actor turned 70 years old. At such an age, it is already difficult to defeat villains in hand-to-hand combats, even on the cinema screen.