Steven Frederic Seagal (born April 10, 1952) is an American actor, film producer, screenwriter, film director, martial artist, musician, reserve deputy sheriff and entrepreneur. A 7th-dan black belt in Aikido, Seagal began his adult life as an Aikido instructor in Japan. He became the first foreigner to operate an Aikido dojo in Japan.

He later moved to the Los Angeles, California, area where he made his film debut in 1988 in Above the Law. By 1991, he had starred in three successful films and achieved fame in Under Siege (1992), where he played Navy SEALs counter-terrorist expert Casey Ryback. However both On Deadly Ground (1994, which he directed) and Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995) did less well at the box office. During the latter half of the 1990s, he starred in three more theatrical films and the direct-to-video (in the US) film The Patriot. Since that time, with the exception of Exit Wounds (2001) and Half Past Dead (2002), his career has shifted almost entirely to direct-to-video films (often low budget productions and shot in Europe or Asia). From 1998 to 2009, he appeared in a total of 22 of these. At the age of 59, he returned to the big screen as Torrez in the 2010 film Machete. In 2011, he filmed the third season of his reality show Steven Seagal: Lawman.