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Who is the Asian actor with long hair and a mustache that always showed up in action movies from the 1980s and 1990s in speaking and non-speaking roles?by Ken Miyamoto.
You’re talking about the man, the myth, the legend — Al Leong. The greatest action movie henchman in the history of cinema.
He’s worked with action stars like Mel Gibson, Kurt Russell, Bruce Willis, Jean Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Brandon Lee, among others. He even worked in non-henchman roles alongside future action stars like Keanu Reeves.
Leong was born in St. Louis, Missouri — the youngest of three children from Chinese-American parents. In 1962, when he was 10 years old, they moved to Los Angeles.
In the late 1970s/early 1980s, Al Jeong worked as a grip for Warner Brothers Studios.
On the set of Off the Wall he was approached by the director and asked if he knew martial arts. Al grew up a martial artist, having practiced in Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, Kali, and Jujutsu through much of his life. The director asked if he could teach four actresses playing cheerleaders a routine. He did and actually ended up in the movie.
A week later he worked on another film (which I believe was The Twilight Zone: The Movie), where he had to run through fake rain within a pool of water. He got his SAG (Screen Actors Guild) card. He had no clue what to do with it, but it led to a lot of stunt work in movies and on shows like Magnum P.I., The A Team, and Knight Rider.
His first substantial film stunt work was on John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. He played the Wing Kong Hatchet Man.
His role as Endo in Lethal Weapon was a short but sweet onscreen appearance that truly launched his stuntman status in action movies.
He was the henchman that administered the electric shock torture onto Mel Gibson’s Riggs. He is later killed onscreen by Riggs via a lethal leg chokehold.
But it was Die Hard that really cemented his iconic status. He played henchman Uli, the terrorist that, amidst getting ready for an impending raid by SWAT team members, decided to take a piece of candy from the kiosk he was hiding behind.In 1989, he graduated (briefly) from henchman status to portray Ghengis Khan in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
In 1993, his carer was momentarily paused when he discovered that he had brain cancer. He overcame that, only to have a stroke in 2005. He has since lost the use of his right arm.
Check out this awesome 2012 interview.Al was and is always a humble man. Despite some lines throughout the years, he has always said that he’s not an actor — he’s a stuntman.
I’ll continue to remember him as the coolest and greatest cinematic henchman in action movies.Who is the Asian actor with long hair and a mustache that always showed up in action movies from the 1980s and 1990s in speaking and non-speaking roles?by Ken Miyamoto.You’re talking about the man, the myth, the legend — Al Leong.
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That was cool. I think we all remember him.
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L. Thomas RouseWhich Hollywood actors or actresses’ careers were ruined because of a lie?
Jean Seberg was a pretty young girl from Iowa who managed to land the title role in Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan. Her selection as a total newcomer got great press, but the critics panned both her and the film. A second attempt in a French film did not do much better, and for the next few years, she bounced between French and American cinema before hitting her stride in The Mouse that Roared. Her career was on a steady upward arc through the late 1960s as she appeared in Paint your Wagon and Airport.
Beginning in the late 1960s, she donated to groups that supported the civil rights movement, including the NAACP and various Native American rights groups, which put her on the radar of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. They initiated a COINTELPRO operation against her.
The operation uncovered donations she made to the Black Panther Party and seizing on that, the FBI created a false story that she was made pregnant by Raymond Hewitt, a prominent Black Panther leader. The story was reported by the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek. She was pregnant at the time by her husband, Romain Gary, and she became so upset at the stories that she went into premature labor, and the baby died after two days. Seberg and her husband sued Newsweek for defamation and won. Newsweek paid $10,000 in damages and was ordered to print a retraction in their magazine and several newspapers.
But the harassment didn’t stop.
The FBI kept her under aggressive surveillance in that their agents made little to no effort to disguise their presence, her phones were tapped for years, and they enlisted Army Intelligence and the CIA to keep her under watch when she was abroad. Records released under FOIA requests revealed Hoover kept the Nixon White House apprised of the status of her case through reports to John Ehrlichman.
At the peak of her career and the height of the FBI harassment, her roles in Hollywood suddenly dried up. She was being offered parts that, in her words, bordered on pornography or were minor characters. Researchers who have reviewed the records of the operation believe she was effectively blacklisted because no production company wanted to deal with the FBI harassing their productions. She moved to France, where she spent the rest of her life.
On August 30, 1979, her body was found wrapped in a blanket in the back seat of her car in Paris, not far from her home. There was a note to her son found with the remains, a bottle of pills, and an empty mineral water bottle. The following year, charges were filed against “persons unknown” for failing to provide assistance to an endangered person. Her autopsy revealed a blood alcohol level that would have prevented her from getting into the car by herself, but there were no alcohol containers found. The French police surmised someone must have put her in the car and left her. Her first husband, Romain Gary said that the FBI harassment was the primary cause of the mental health issues she experienced in her last years.
The FBI not only ruined an innocent person’s career with their lies, they effectively took her life.
Ray Liotta, star of ‘Goodfellas,’ dead at 67
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What is Ray Liotta’s best movie?.(from quora)...
Everything about the movie is iconic. Everything. It’s quite literally the perfect movie in my estimation because the dialogue, the tempo, the scenery and casting is all top-notch. And yes, this includes Ray Liotta. He is brilliant. Even his laughter is iconic enough to become a meme almost thirty years after the movie came out. I also like the backstory of Liotta, the man — hired by Scorcese to play Henry Hill, the director thought he was pulling quite a funny move; Hill was a half-Irish kid who couldn’t make it as a proper ‘made man’ mobster as he wasn’t “pure Italian”. Liotta, meanwhile, was adopted by an Italian American family as an infant. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that he tracked down his biological mother and discovered he was, in fact, of Scottish ancestry.</p>
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Ray Liotta was a fine actor and he never disappointed in any of his roles. Goodfellas defined him, but he was so much more than Henry Hill. He played fine heroes, anti-heroes and villains alike. He could do creepy, sympathetic and intense, sometimes a mix of all the above. Those piercing blue eyes mmust have helped an awful lot, too. Screen presence for miles.
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I absolutely loved Ray Liotta as an actor and Goodfellas will always be one of my all-time favorite movies. I’m shocked and saddened to see him die so suddenly, aged only 67. He died abroad while filming, in bed the night before another day of shooting. Died with his boots on. A shame he won’t give the world of film more of his amazing talent. Rest in piece, you magnificent bastard!</p>
from quora: Amy Christa Ernano
What actor or actress added their own take on a scene so well that it was kept in the movie or TV series?This iconic line, spoken by police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) when the giant shark finally makes an appearance in Jaws, was not in the script. Scheider ad-libbed it based on an in-joke among the cast and crew.
The barge rented by producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown to hold the equipment and craft services during filming of the ocean scenes — promptly nicknamed the “USS Garage Sale” — was notoriously small and had only one undersized support boat to help hold it steady, meaning it was constantly rocking and bobbing, leaving cast and crew in fear it would capsize.
Subsequently, “you’re gonna need a bigger boat” became shorthand among the cast and crew anytime something went wrong on set (which happened often; the Jaws shoot was among the most infamously fraught with problems in movie history).
from quoraMFPaul.What are some strange facts about Tommy Lee Jones?.He played football for Harvard, could have gone pro.Although he has enjoyed a long and hugely successful screen career, Jones wasn’t always dead-set on becoming an actor.
Earlier in life, he looked far more likely to become a professional football player, as he excelled at the sport.
When Jones got into Harvard, he played guard on the prestigious college’s football team.
He was part of the undefeated 1968 line-up, and part of what has been called “the most famous football game in Ivy League history” against Yale.
Years later, Jones recounted this celebrated game and his role in it in the 2008 documentary Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
Because of this, Jones naturally considered pursuing football professionally – ultimately, the lure of acting won out.
from quoraMichael McTigheStudies Film Science & Movie Production at Columbia College Chicago.Who is the least problematic Hollywood actor?.Hugh Jackman./.
Every set I’ve worked on you meet someone who has met Hugh Jackman, and by all accounts he is Jesus Christ. Literally the kindest, most self-effacing, humble co-worker you will ever meet. As lore goes he does something called “Lottery Ticket Fridays” where he will buy lottery tickets for everyone in the cast and crew and hand them out. If anyone has a winning ticket, they get to keep all that money
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He’s married and has stayed married.
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His wife is ten years his senior, and he really seems to love her deeply. Without trying to be insulting, it’s very clear that he is in no way superficial or shallow. These people look like the couple that lives down the block from you if one of them was Wolverine.
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He has a great relationship with his kids. One of my favorite stories is about how one of his son’s friends was enamored that his dad was Wolverine, and his son replied “He’s nothing like Wolverine. My Dad is a total dork.” Perfect.
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He’s also super talented. He can dance, and sing, and act better than most of his contemporaries. I defy anyone to watch The Greatest Showman and not have an amazing time. I defy anyone to watch Prisoners and not think that’s some of the greatest acting they have ever seen. His commitment and body transformation for Wolverine also deserves accolades. For him to maintain that body for that character is nothing short of uncanny. I defy anyone to tell me his Wolverine was not the best action hero of the last thirty years.
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He has no scandals. His politics are a mystery. Everyone loves him. Hugh Jackman is the best.
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