The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

OT: anything goes!

Moderator: Edi

Post Reply
User avatar
mr friendly guy
The Doctor
Posts: 11235
Joined: 2004-12-12 10:55pm
Location: In a 1960s police telephone box somewhere in Australia

The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by mr friendly guy »

steven seagal
From Putin’s Hands: A Russian Passport for Steven Seagal
By CHRISTINE HAUSERNOV. 25, 2016

Steven Seagal, the American actor whose career peaked in the 1990s with movies like “Under Siege” and whose specialty was portraying action figures who spoke softly but blew up buildings and assassinated bad guys, has taken on a new role off screen: that of a Russian citizen with the passport to prove it.

President Vladimir V. Putin personally handed over the actor’s new Russian passport on Friday in a scene at the Kremlin that was considerably more muted than those in Mr. Seagal’s movies. The actor sat across a table from the Russian leader in Moscow, his arms folded or, at times, his hands clasped in a gesture of thanks.

After the Russian leader presented him with the document, Mr. Seagal signed it, according to the Russian news agency TASS and other news outlets.

Mr. Putin told Mr. Seagal, according to TASS, that the two would not “politicize” the event. But the Russian leader, who has said he hoped for better ties with the United States after the election of Donald J. Trump, was also quoted as telling Mr. Seagal: “I would like to congratulate you, and I also hope that this small step will mark the beginning of the gradual improvement in our interstate relations.”

Mr. Seagal replied in Russian, “Thank you very much,” according to TASS.

Mr. Seagal, who is 64 and was born in Michigan, follows in the footsteps of another Western actor whose fame crested decades ago but who managed to emerge in the embrace of Russia: Gerard Depardieu, the French actor, was given Russian citizenship in 2013 after renouncing his native citizenship in a protest over high taxes.

The American boxer Roy Jones Jr. also became a Russian citizen in 2015, The Associated Press reported.

The Kremlin announced on Nov. 3 that Mr. Seagal had received Russian citizenship, but it was not immediately clear why he sought that status. On Twitter, Mr. Seagal has said that he has family ties to Russia but that he never intended to give up his American citizenship.
Dual citizenship is not abandoning my country. I love the USA. Family comes from Russia. @LJCuzzort @rtoberl @realDonaldTrump

— Steven Seagal (@sseagalofficial) Nov. 11, 2016
Mr. Seagal, whose movies are popular in Russia, has defended his forays into that country over the years, especially during times when relations between Washington and Moscow were frosty. (Relations have been severely strained since Russia’s annexation of Crimea, with the United States leading the charge, with European allies, to impose sanctions. With the election of Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin has telegraphed his hopes for better ties.)

The actor has been criticized for his seemingly warm relationship with Mr. Putin. In 2014, he said on his website that he had been misquoted in reports about his opinions on Mr. Putin, saying he had never called him the “world’s greatest leader,” but rather “ONE of the World’s Great Leaders.”

Mr. Seagal’s foray into Russia calls to mind other American celebrities who have drawn attention for their visits to countries whose ties with the United States, if they exist at all, have been exceedingly cold.

Dennis Rodman, the former professional basketball star, has made a series of bizarre trips to North Korea, even as that country detained and paraded American visitors in a geopolitical spectacle. In January 2014, Mr. Rodman even took part in birthday celebrations for Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, who is said to be a fan of basketball.

Mr. Putin, for his part, is a fan of the kind of martial-arts movies that Mr. Seagal has executed in his Hollywood career, Reuters reported. The actor first burst onto the national stage with “Above the Law” in 1988.

In 1991, a New York Times review of Mr. Seagal’s movie career described him as the reigning action-movie star of the time, a “guy with a scowl, a ponytail and an attitude” whose first three films had worldwide box-office and video receipts totaling more than $200 million. Later, he emerged as a Tibetan Buddhist master.

Mr. Seagal also has dozens of acting and directing credits to his name, and according to IMDb, the film site, he has several projects in the works for next year.

In one of his latest films, “Code of Honor,” which was released this year and called “laughably awful” by The Los Angeles Times, he plays a special-forces colonel who does the dirty work of many men by going after drug dealers and gang members as he avenges the fatal drive-by shooting of his wife and child.

“I still love my country, I still love my family, and I am still an honorable man,” he says in a Southern drawl in a scene from the movie trailer. “If I am the bad guy, what does that make you?”
Well I guess he was buttsore after he got killed fighting terrorists and he looks up a man who can finish the job, aka Putin. :D

Jokes aside, I have to wonder why these Western celebrities get Russian passports? With Gerard Depardieu it was because he hate taxes. Is this another status symbol thing. Is it Putin? Its most probably not the most urgent thing to know, but it does interest me.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.

Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by K. A. Pital »

Seagal was wildly popular in Russia.

Maybe he's paying the fans back.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
User avatar
Sea Skimmer
Yankee Capitalist Air Pirate
Posts: 37389
Joined: 2002-07-03 11:49pm
Location: Passchendaele City, HAB

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by Sea Skimmer »

A time existed when Segale tried to act like he was attempting to give voice to poor and oppressed causes through his shitty movies. And now here he is accepting citizenship from Putin. I guess that's what happen when the direct to DVD movie market implodes.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
Posts: 21222
Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
Contact:

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

It would be pure irony and pure ideology if he goes around Crimea or Eastern Ukraine supporting or even assisting those militias of Putin's making. He'll end up being akin to the Evil Eastern European Slav Dude in his own shitty movies or in those Expendables movies.
Image "DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)
shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people :D - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
User avatar
Broomstick
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 28724
Joined: 2004-01-02 07:04pm
Location: Industrial armpit of the US Midwest

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by Broomstick »

It might be as simple as Seagal's father's family being from Russia. I think Putin might consider it some sort of political or PR value, but on Seagal's side it could be that simple.

Or something else.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.

Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
User avatar
Zaune
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 7430
Joined: 2010-06-21 11:05am
Location: In Transit
Contact:

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by Zaune »

Sea Skimmer wrote:A time existed when Segale tried to act like he was attempting to give voice to poor and oppressed causes through his shitty movies. And now here he is accepting citizenship from Putin. I guess that's what happen when the direct to DVD movie market implodes.
If he was serious about that he wouldn't have got himself deputised by Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)


Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin


Like my writing? Tip me on Patreon

I Have A Blog
User avatar
Thanas
Magister
Magister
Posts: 30779
Joined: 2004-06-26 07:49pm

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by Thanas »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:It would be pure irony and pure ideology if he goes around Crimea or Eastern Ukraine supporting or even assisting those militias of Putin's making. He'll end up being akin to the Evil Eastern European Slav Dude in his own shitty movies or in those Expendables movies.
Heh, he already was doing that like half a year ago and has performed with his blues band in Crimea.

Plus he right now is doing shitty ads for Russian video game makers, so....
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------
My LPs
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by K. A. Pital »

I think all these action movie heroes just see in Putin the embodiment of characters they have played.

This is a natural attractor for them.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
User avatar
Steve
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 9762
Joined: 2002-07-03 01:09pm
Location: Florida USA
Contact:

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by Steve »

Thanas wrote:
Shroom Man 777 wrote:It would be pure irony and pure ideology if he goes around Crimea or Eastern Ukraine supporting or even assisting those militias of Putin's making. He'll end up being akin to the Evil Eastern European Slav Dude in his own shitty movies or in those Expendables movies.
Heh, he already was doing that like half a year ago and has performed with his blues band in Crimea.

Plus he right now is doing shitty ads for Russian video game makers, so....
So you're telling me you didn't grind to unlock Seagal as a ship commander for World of Warships? :wink:
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia

American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.

DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
User avatar
Thanas
Magister
Magister
Posts: 30779
Joined: 2004-06-26 07:49pm

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by Thanas »

Steve wrote:So you're telling me you didn't grind to unlock Seagal as a ship commander for World of Warships? :wink:

No way to avoid him.

But his voiceovers are so crap that I stuck him in the colorado and went back to the Dasha voiceover.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------
My LPs
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
Posts: 21222
Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
Contact:

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

K. A. Pital wrote:I think all these action movie heroes just see in Putin the embodiment of characters they have played.

This is a natural attractor for them.
Daddy issues. Not only in emasculated populations seeking demagogues for security and the feeling of empowerment... but also in these once-virile once-macho meng who are fading in their potency - be it sexual or martial or whatever - and so to cope they either fall for these asshats, form little clubs with these asshats, or part of this and a... weird-ass internalization of their old "roles" and "acts," which they use as crutches and which start becoming too real. Like old wrestlers who start believing they are really the characters they are playing...
Image "DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)
shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people :D - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by K. A. Pital »

Birdman.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
Posts: 21222
Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
Contact:

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Yes. But Birdman resulted in an awesome performance (in-movie). My point of reference would be... Ultimate Warrior from wrestling.
Image "DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)
shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people :D - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
User avatar
Lord Revan
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 12211
Joined: 2004-05-20 02:23pm
Location: Zone:classified

Re: The latest celebrity to get Russian citizenship is

Post by Lord Revan »

I'm pretty sure that the Ultimate Warrior was brain fried and/or wierd even by wrestling standards.
I may be an idiot, but I'm a tolerated idiot
"I think you completely missed the point of sigs. They're supposed to be completely homegrown in the fertile hydroponics lab of your mind, dried in your closet, rolled, and smoked...
Oh wait, that's marijuana..."Einhander Sn0m4n
Post Reply