I briefly studied martial arts in college and realised that I might not be a great fighter physically, but it gave me mental strength and boosted my confidence.
I'm also a martial-arts practitioner, so it was an easy transition to go do 'Street Fighter,' which is action-packed and let me showcase my acting and martial-arts capabilities.
I consider myself a decent athlete but when I started to train martial arts like Kung Fu, I realised it had nothing to do with how athletic you are. It's all mental. It's what you know, how you use it and your mental toughness and composure. It's incredible.
I don't get to do a lot of fight scenes on 'Sanctuary,' but I'm a trained fighter; I've been doing martial arts for years and, you know, I'm very active physically; I used to be a circus performer.
Martial arts, for me, is not just some kind of job to gain some money or whatever. No, martial arts, for me, is my lifestyle, my religion, my philosophy... Martial arts are everything for me.
I began to study martial arts because it was a great form of exercise, and I knew it would help my acting career. Martial arts reminded me of dancing. It has helped me learn fight sequences quicker.
To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.
On 'Black Lightning' I have a stunt double who's a lot younger than me. The fighting style on the show is heavily martial arts-based, and I know boxing; I don't know martial arts. I also have a really bad knee, and he's been doing martial arts since he was 6 years old, so I'm not thinking, 'No, I can do that! I can make that look cool!'
I studied martial arts before I studied dance.
Actually, I have never been a great fan of martial arts competitions. Not even when I was training martial arts myself.
I love puppies, and I love animals in general. Besides that, I do martial arts: extreme martial arts. I also play real guitar and drums, and sing. And I'm taking some college classes, hoping to major in English and creative writing.
Miles and I had been looking to do a martial arts show for some time. Our first two movies that we wrote were "Lethal Weapon 4" and "Shanghai Noon" with Jackie Chan. Then we sort of got pulled into the superhero world, but then you look around at what's not on television and there wasn't really a martial arts shows. There are shows that do martial arts to a degree, but there's not a martial arts show.
I wanted to know what exactly martial arts is. When you look at martial arts films, the later ones became more and more exaggerated. It's like, wow, is martial arts only a show?
I'm a street fighter. I'm ready for any kind of mixed martial arts that comes at me.
I am so happy because I want more people to like martial arts movie not just martial arts audience. Even martial arts can be used in comedy, in drama, in horror movies, in different kinds of movies.
People often say, 'Ah, ultimate fighting is so violent,' but it's rooted in martial arts. Martial arts incarnate respect. You can't walk into a dojo and say to your sensei, 'Hey, salut tabarnac!' After every one of my fights I go and shake the hand of my opponent. I don't need to hate the other fighter to fight him well. It's a sport.
Martial arts was something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and I wasn't getting what I needed from college. When I realized that I could fight for money and have it be part of my learning experience as a martial artist, it made perfect sense for me to dive into fighting.