Steven Seagal today: Children, Net Worth, Family, and Wife

Steven Seagal is one of those Hollywood stars who became famous practically quickly. However, this actor has had a chaotic life, moving from one location to the next and devoting his attention to the things that actually made him happy.

Seagal was born on April 10, 1952, in Lansing, Michigan, but his family relocated to Fullerton, California, when he was only five. Growing up, Seagal had a strong affinity for blues and received his first instrument at a young age. Another thing that piqued his interest and eventually became an important part of his life was martial arts.

Seagal lied about his age when he was 17 years old to secure a job as a dishwasher at a restaurant. The cook, who knew karate, noticed young Seagal’s enthusiasm for the art and decided to teach him some moves. This fueled Seagal’s passion for martial arts, prompting him to leave the United States and relocate to Japan in order to perfect the art.

He spent 15 years studying karate, judo, kendo, and aikido, achieving black belts in each of these disciplines. At the same time, Seagal became the first Westerner to establish a dojo, or “school for training in diverse disciplines of self-defense,” in Japan.

Unlike many foreigners who travel to Japan to learn martial arts and pay to be taught the fundamentals before returning home and attempting to share that information, Seagal excelled and told the Los Angeles Times in 1986, “You must understand that the path to enlightenment is through deprivation. They create an environment in which you do not receive any approval for the work you do.

“You are not receiving any sleep, love, or attention; you are getting your buttocks kicked, and you are up before everybody else to prepare meals and clean.

“They push you to your limit, and when you are so deprived and hungry for everything, a little window opens in your mind that when they do give you something, you are going to get it, understand it, appreciate it, and understand some of the mystical deeper meaning that begins to emerge for you.

“The martial arts must be an undertaking in which you seek to grow the physical man while also perfecting the spiritual self,” he continued. “If what you are doing is devoid of spiritual soul, it is just street warfare.”

Once in America, Seagal put his newfound knowledge to use throughout the next 15 years.

After seeing some movies in which actors attempted karate or other martial arts and failed or were not very competent, Seagal decided to relocate to Los Angeles and share his knowledge. At the same time, he wanted to try his hand in the acting business.

Seagal worked on films like The Challenge (1982), starring Scott Glenn, and James Bond’s Never Say Never Again (1983), starring Sean Connery.

Speaking of collaborating with Seagal, Connery stated on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1996, “We were going to do a film called Never Say Never Again, and there was a potential I was going to do Aikido and so on.

“I contacted Steven, and we had this training at the building where I had an apartment, and he was absolutely fantastic. And I got a little cocky because I assumed I understood what I was doing since the premise is defense, so it is a pyramid, and I got a little flash.

“I did that—and he fractured my wrist.”

Along with being a martial arts celebrity and appearing on magazine covers, Seagal worked as a bodyguard for several celebrities, including Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz, who became a lifelong friend and helped him with his acting career.

Ovitz was confident that Seagal would perform well on screen, so he opted to pay for his screen test with Warner Brothers.

“The performance was very miraculous,” said Warner Bros. President Terry Semel to the Los Angeles Times in 1988. “With a simple flick of his palm, Steven could send the other person flying. I am not a martial-arts expert, but he had the capacity to knock these men up in the air so effortlessly—it was fairly amazing.”

That was the beginning of Steven Seagal’s brilliant career, which propelled him to international fame. Over the years, the Under Siege star appeared in over 50 films.

His private life is anything but tranquil.

Seagal married four times and has seven children. He has two children from his marriage to aikido instructor Miyako Fujitani: son Kentaro and daughter Ayake.

Seagal’s second marriage, to Adrienne LaRussa, lasted only three months before they divorced. Three years after his divorce, he married actress Kelly LeBrock and had two daughters, Annaliza and Arissa, as well as a son named Dominic. The marriage terminated nine years later, in 1996. While married to LeBrock, Seagal had an affair with Arissa Wolf, his children’s babysitter, with whom he has a daughter, Savannah.

Seagal is currently married to Erdenetuya “Elle” Batsukh, a Mongolian-American TV personality and dancer. They have a daughter together.

According to accounts, Seagal has a strained relationship with all of his children. Kentaro, his eldest son, told RadarOnline that he no longer speaks to his father, and Seagal has not contacted him. Kentaro went on to add that he did not even know his father.

Steven Seagal presently lives in Moscow, Russia, after receiving Russian citizenship in November 2016. Apparently, he works as a “special representative for Russian-US humanitarian links” and left America to avoid paying $200,000 for failing to disclose that he was paid to promote a digital currency.

Steven Seagal, 69, appears nearly unrecognizable in the majority of the photographs he posts on Instagram. The 6-foot-4 actor has a net worth of $16 million.

 

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