These Are The Celebrities Who Have Serious Beef With Steven Seagal

In 1992 Nicolas Cage flubbed a monologue during a hosting gig on Saturday Night Live. The embarrassed star found show creator Lorne Michaels backstage and asked for forgiveness, lamenting how his mistakes surely made him the most appalling host in the show’s history. Not missing a beat, Michaels reportedly said, “No, no – that would be Steven Seagal.” Oof.

When Seagal hosted in 1991, he was both a backstage diva and a comedy vacuum in front of the camera. In a book about the history of SNL, cast member Tim Meadows revealed, “The biggest problem with Steven Seagal was that he would complain about jokes he didn’t get… He just wasn’t funny, and he was very critical of the cast and writing staff.” Fittingly, Seagal was barred from ever hosting again.

Retired UFC legend Randy Couture made a joke in 2012 that the only fighter he’d come out of retirement to face was none other than Steven Seagal. Everyone laughed at his gag. Well, everyone except Seagal, who took it 100 percent seriously and informed The MMA Hour that he was perplexed by Couture’s statement. He then said he’d fight Couture, but only if there was nobody else present. Oh dear.

An amused Couture then responded during an interview with Cage Potato. He said, “I’m not surprised that he wants to do it in a private, remote location where nobody could see it happen. Obviously, I intended it as a joke. I don’t think it would really happen.” And to date, it hasn’t happened. It simply goes down as another example of humor wildly evading the self-serious Seagal.

In 2014 Seagal took a shot at everyone’s favorite action-movie elder statesman during an interview with The Big Issue. When asked about Liam Neeson, the ponytailed tough guy said, “He can’t fight, he’s not an action movie guy at all and he’s getting action movies now, so that should tell you something. He’s a great dramatic actor. Is he an action guy? No. Is he a great fighter, a great warrior? No.”

Eventually, a journalist at a press junket fudged the details slightly when they asked Neeson, “Hey, what do you think of Steven Seagal saying you don’t know how to punch?” This understandably raised Neeson’s ire, as he was a boxer in his teens. The unamused star replied, “I know how to punch.” He later admitted to Jimmy Kimmel that he was, “particularly annoyed” with Seagal. Uh oh.

George Foreman, the iconic former boxer and purveyor of the world’s greatest fat-reducing meat grilling machine, once challenged Seagal to a fight. Yes, you read that right. In 2017, out of nowhere, Foreman tweeted, “Steven Seagal, I challenge you one-on-one. I use boxing. You can use whatever. 10 rounds in Vegas.” The world held its breath in bemused anticipation.

Seagal, unsurprisingly, never responded to the challenge. When a Twitter user asked Foreman, “Why are you fighting him? God doesn’t like fighting,” he replied, “I’ll get back to you later; this is a sport, no anger involved.” Maybe he didn’t care for Seagal’s movies. Maybe he wanted to put the supposed tough guy actor in his place. Maybe we’ll never know why.

In 2013 UFC fighter Anderson Silva said, “Seagal is good man. No coach, no train me. Is a good man, a good person. That’s it.” What exactly made the Brazilian champion say these things, though? Well, in 2011 Silva downed Vitor Belfort to retain his middleweight championship. It was a big moment – and Seagal tried to claim that he was responsible for it.

Yes, Seagal actually alleged that he devised the type of kick that had downed Belfort – and had taught it to Silva. To be fair, the action star did accompany Silva at the fight and was involved to a degree in his training. Saying he was responsible for the whole thing was too much for Silva, though. And he distanced himself from Seagal further by saying he’d practiced the kick for many years.

The late rapper-turned-actor DMX worked with Seagal on 2001’s Exit Wounds, the only hit movie the aikido master has made post-2000. But those box-office receipts weren’t enough to stop DMX publicly lambasting Seagal in 2002. He accused Seagal of having “spray-on hair” and called him things that we won’t repeat here. And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

“He talked like he was an old slave master,” DMX told Stuff magazine. “‘Hey wassup? We’s gonna have us a barbecue.’ I was just like, ‘Man, who… do you think you’re talking to? Get… out of here with that…” To be fair, the two men must have buried the hatchet somewhere along the way, as they re-teamed in 2019 low-budget actioner Beyond The Law.

In 2011 Groundhog Day’s Stephen Tobolowsky gave a hilarious recounting of his experience shooting 1996’s The Glimmer Man to The A.V. Club. He began by detailing how he was forced to try out for the lead villain role at Seagal’s house, where he stuck around from 10:00 a.m. until 12:30, when the action icon finally decided to get out of bed. This was pretty rude, but Seagal demanding script changes in the middle of the shoot was even worse.

“He decided it was bad for his karma to constantly be killing people in movies,” revealed Tobolowsky. “And I said, ‘Well, it’s important in the script that he kills me, because I’m, like, a serial killer.” Tobolowsky claimed he then pulled a mind trick on Seagal, convincing him that killing the villain was actually freeing his spirit to be reincarnated as something good. He could then make up for his previous crimes. Yes, really.

In 2019 the legendary Michael Caine looked back over his career with Rolling Stone. He revealed two movies on his resume that he regretted making. One was The Swarm, the 1978 disaster movie where he was defecated on by real bees. Gross. His other big regret? The movie he starred in with Seagal: On Deadly Ground.

“It wasn’t one of my dream experiences, to put it nicely,” Caine explained. “We were in Alaska. He was quite pleasant, but I never saw much of him. He never came out of his motorhome very much. He was one of the top whatever it is – jiu-jitsu, whatever it is they do. I’d never argue with him. I didn’t want him to throw me over.”

Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme were two of the biggest names in action cinema in the 1990s. Naturally, they hated each other and engaged in a long-running public feud. It was like the rivalry between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, only those guys were fighting over A-list blockbusters and not low-rent martial arts pictures.

Speaking of Stallone, it was he who revealed that the two nearly came to blows while attending one of his parties. Sly told FHM, “At a party in my home in Miami in 1997, Van Damme was tired of Seagal claiming he could kick his ass, so he offered Seagal outside into my back yard. Seagal made his excuses and left.” He added, “Van Damme was just too strong. Seagal wanted none of it.”

Unlike most people on this list, Charlize Theron didn’t need to have a personal interaction with Seagal to know she didn’t think too highly of him. In a 2020 radio interview with Howard Stern, she revealed that she’d taken a look at online videos of Seagal training in Japan. To say the star was far from dazzled would be an understatement.

“I have no problem talking… about him because he’s not very nice to women,” said Theron. “He’s overweight and can barely fight. Look it up, it’s ridiculous. He’s shoving people by the face. It’s a whole setup.” To be fair, Theron knows where she’s coming from, after engaging in extensive training for her action roles in the likes of The Old Guard and Atomic Blonde.

Before Steven Seagal came along and stole his thunder, Richard Gere was Hollywood’s premier Buddhist. He reportedly first made a pilgrimage to India and Nepal in the late 1970s, where he met the Dalai Lama. In 1999 Gere told Melvin McLeod, “It completely changed my life the first time I was in the presence of His Holiness.”

When Seagal became the Hollywood poster child for Buddhism, though, it’s believed Gere wasn’t overly amused. Especially when Penor Rinpoche, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism’s Nyingma School, declared that Seagal was actually the holy being known as a “tulku” and “a reincarnated lama.” Gere reportedly remarked, “If someone’s a tulku, that’s great. But no one knows if that’s true.”

At one point in time, Steven Seagal and Julius R. Nasso were the best of friends. Nasso was Seagal’s main collaborator and together they produced the series of hit movies during the 1990s that made Seagal a star. Hard To Kill. Marked For Death. Under Siege. Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. All Nasso/Seagal efforts. All money-makers.

But they had a bad falling out in 2000, and it eventually led to Nasso enlisting his mobster friends to intimidate Seagal into making more movies with him. No, we aren’t joking. In the end, the FBI got involved and Nasso went to jail for 12 months. Amazingly, after he left the slammer, he brought a $60 million lawsuit against Seagal for lost movie revenue. The two former pals eventually settled out of court.

Steven Seagal broke Sean Connery’s wrist. Accidentally, of course, but he still broke it. Isn’t that crazy? How did this insane incident occur, you may ask? Well, in 1996 Connery appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and recounted the tale. It happened in the early 1980s, when Connery needed an aikido master to help train him for the Bond movie Never Say Never Again. A young Seagal was that master.

When it came to martial arts, the karate black belt Connery was no slouch. The star told Leno, “I got a little cocky because I thought I knew what I was doing, because the principle is it’s self-defense.” He then lifted his arm in a defensive motion in front of his head and said, “I did that, and he broke my wrist.” Dammit Seagal, the man was a Scottish national treasure! Be more careful!

The A.V. Club got another Seagal-based scoop when they interviewed John Leguizamo, who starred with the difficult action star in Executive Decision. Leguizamo revealed they had an uncomfortably physical encounter after he chuckled when Seagal entered rehearsals and immediately said, “I’m in command. What I say is law.” Next thing he knew, Leguizamo found himself in some jeopardy.

“So, I started laughing and he slammed me with an aikido elbow against a brick wall and knocked all the air out of me,” revealed Leguizamo. “I dropped to the ground and all I could say was, ‘Why? Why?’” The disgruntled actor then joked, “On the days when we shot the scene where he died, I showed up so early. I wanted to see him die. It was like a fantasy.”

On November 8, 2017, Arrested Development star Portia de Rossi tweeted an extremely serious allegation against Seagal. It concerned a harrowing experience early in her career. The actress wrote, “My final audition for a Steven Seagal movie took place in his office. He told me how important it was to have chemistry off-screen as he sat me down and unzipped his leather pants.”

“I ran out and called my agent,” continued de Rossi. “Unfazed, she replied, ‘Well, I didn’t know if he was your type.’” The allegation, and her representation’s reaction to it, were very damning indictments of a culture that’s reportedly run rampant in Hollywood for years. De Rossi’s wife Ellen DeGeneres retweeted her allegation, adding, “I’m proud of my wife.”

“Judo” Gene LeBell, also known as the “Godfather of Grappling,” is an iconic American martial artist and stuntman. He worked as the stunt supervisor on Out For Justice and, as the legend goes, got in an altercation with Steven Seagal. You see, Seagal allegedly bragged that he’s able to escape any chokehold and challenged LeBell to put him in one.

LeBell supposedly obliged and then proceeded to choke the star until he was out cold. It’s even claimed Seagal also lost control of his bowels as a result. In 2012 LeBell told The MMA Hour, “Well, if a guy soils himself, you can’t criticize him, because if they just had a nice big dinner an hour before, you might have a tendency to do that.” Seagal categorically denied the story, calling LeBell a, “pathological scumbag liar.”

“I would beat the crap out of Steven Seagal.” This charming little gem was uttered by UFC legend Ronda Rousey when she was interviewed by MMAInterviews.tv in 2012. How exactly did she get talking about the aikido master? Well, she was asked about Seagal calling Gene LeBell a liar for telling his chokehold story. Rousey didn’t take kindly to it. Because LeBell’s her uncle.

Regarding Seagal’s denial of the story, Rousey said, “Would you ever admit it… I mean, obviously the guy’s a liar. He told everybody he taught Anderson Silva that kick. I mean, seriously, the guy doesn’t have a very good track record.” This then led to Rousey saying she could beat Seagal up, before she dropped the mic with, “I would make him crap his pants a second time.”

During a 2017 Just Jenny interview on SiriusXM, ER star Juliana Margulies told of a disturbing meeting she had with Steven Seagal. She alleged that a female casting director set it up for her to run through a scene with the action star. In a hotel room. At 10:40 in the evening. The director promised she’d be present too, but when Margulies arrived, she was nowhere to be seen.

Seagal sat Margulies on a sofa and, when she felt something hard beneath the cushion, it turned out to be a firearm. The scared actress, who was only 23 at the time, had never encountered one before in real life. Thankfully, she managed to leave the room without anything else happening to her. In 2021 she elaborated slightly on Drew Barrymore’s talk show, revealing that Seagal then tried to read her palm in order to heal her kidneys. What a weirdo.

Like that annoying guy in the schoolyard, Steven Seagal could never seem to stop shooting his mouth off about defeating people in fights. But, when he bragged that he could defeat the likes of Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee, he went too far for Bob Wall. You see, Wall was a martial artist who’d seen both Norris and Lee in action, and he believed Seagal was full of it.

Wall therefore put together the “Dirty Dozen,” a selection of karate experts and elite kickboxers, and they challenged Seagal to back up his words. They wanted to prove to the world that he was a total fraud. Seagal never responded to their series of challenges in the martial arts mags Black Belt and Prevue. Maybe that said all they needed to know.

At the height of the “#MeToo” movement, several women made allegations of impropriety against Seagal. Perhaps even more distrubingly, though, Jenny McCarthy first talked about her frightening experience with Seagal way back in 1998 during an interview with Movieline. Her story was then resurrected at the height of the movement and served as yet another example of Seagal’s long-term conduct.

McCarthy claimed that Seagal tried to get her to remove her clothes in his office, as he claimed that needed to confirm she was “sexy.” After repeated attempts by Seagal, McCarthy said she began weeping and sprinted off to her vehicle. While shutting the car’s door, she alleges that Seagal caught up to her and demanded, “Don’t you ever tell anybody.” She added, “He won’t sue me or say anything, because he knows it’s true.”