Looking Up at the Martial Arts Stars

If you were to look up at the martial arts stars, who would you expect to see? One of the most obvious and most famous would probably be Bruce Lee. But film is only one of the many ways in which people can shine with martial arts. There are Olympic gold medalists, other competitive champions, characters in stories and of course, actors.

Let's concentrate on the most popular form of martial art stardom, the movie industry and see what kinds of people we find. We can separate the martial art film stars into two categories; the martial arts specialists that happen to act and the actors who happen to get a part as a martial artist.

Of the first class, the martial artist, the top martial arts stars are people like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Martial arts movies are not as popular in the U.S. as they used to be but they are still very popular in places like Hong Kong and China. There are many more stars that belong in the first category than there are in the U.S., but we take the gold for the second category, actors in a martial arts role. One of the most recent in this category is Keanu Reeves. Keanu Reeves played the role of Neo in The Matrix. Obviously The Matrix is not a martial arts movie, but it does use a lot of martial arts.

There is one more category that can be added and that is martial arts experts that do not act in film. Of course, there aren't very many people that belong in this category but speaking of The Matrix reminds me of people like Yuen Woo-Ping. Woo-Ping is not an actor, but a director that has helped develop wire assisted martial arts stunts in movies.

The constellations made by martial arts stars are innumerable. Almost every action film we watch contains some form of martial arts or is somehow related to martial arts. From simply disarming an enemy barehanded to flying across the sky to kick someone in the face, martial arts is extremely influential and its stars are very bright indeed. We should never forget that martial arts are not only an awesome way of combat and self-defense, but also a great hobby, an extreme sport and a healthy lifestyle as well as a form of philosophy.

To the beginning of this martial arts stars article