I wasn't that into Steven Seagal when he first hit the big screen. It wasn't until I was walking through my little brother's room one day and he was watching one of Seagal's flicks that he stopped me to show me the scene where the martial artist wraps an 8-ball (the billiards sporting ball, Lindsay! GET BACK IN THE CLOSET!) in a napkin and proceeds to whip the living shit out of everything that moves that I started watching. But Seagal wasn't on top for very long.
By the late 1990s, most of Seagal's movies were going straight to video/DVD, and he has told the LA Times that the FBI is responsible for this.
It all started (more or less) around 2002, when Seagal was implicated in a case involving one Julian Nasso, who is now serving a prison sentence for conspiring to extort money from the actor. A reporter claims she found a dead fish, a rose, and a note that said, "STOP!" on her broken windshield. Seagal called the idea that he had anything to do with any of this "laughable" and insists he made himself available to the investigators, but they weren't interested in what he had to say.
In 2004, Seagal was cleared of any wrongdoing or association with one Anthony Pellicano, a private investigator who is now awaiting sentencing on a number of charges. The FBI was investigating whether or not Seagal had hired Pellicano to lean on the reporter in the above incident, as well as one from Vanity Fair - both of whom were planning unflattering stories about Seagal and his possible involvement with Mafia associates.
Seagal is hoping for a formal apology from the FBI, saying it should put him back in the good graces of studio heads and independent producers, thus reviving his career. The actor is 56.
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