Direct-to-video actor Steven Seagal isn’t making movies that make the U.S. military look good anymore. He’s long since moved to Russia and became a Russian citizen, courtesy of his BFF, Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also gets offers to train foreign special forces and police in hand-to-hand combat. But even when his movie career was at its peak, his “tough guy” image might have been just a front—at least, it was where the mob was concerned.
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There’s no doubt that Seagal has the skills (or used to have them, at least 150 pounds ago) to back up his action movie street cred. So the martial arts parts of his persona is well founded. He is a 7th-dan black belt in aikido and spent his early adult life as a martial arts instructor in Japan before making it big on the silver screen.
While the actor is known for his good career decisions in the martial arts world, he’s not really known for making good career decisions in Hollywood.
One of Seagal’s biggest producers, Julius R. Nasso, helped create a string of action film hits in the early 1990s that kept Seagal’s star shining bright. After the actor’s 1992 film “Under Siege,” which takes place aboard the famed USS Missouri, Seagal was one of Tinseltown’s go-to action movie actors. But it was his relationship with Nasso that would slowly bring down his career.
Under Siege – Original Theatrical Trailer
Nasso produced six of the aikido expert’s most popular films, including “Marked for Death,” “Fire Down Below,” and the sequel to “Under Siege,” “Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.” But the relationship soon soured, and Nasso claimed that Seagal broke a $60 million deal for four more films, tentatively titled “Blood on the Moon,” “Genghis Khan,” “Smash and Grab” and “Prince of Central Park.”
What happened next actually sounds like something out of one of Seagal’s worst action films. The producer just happened to be connected to one of New York’s five mafia families and called on a Gambino associate to help straighten out the action movie star. Seagal had no idea the mob was out for justice until he was helped into a car with some mobsters in Brooklyn in 2001.
Seagal, now 74, claimed that some wiseguys took him to a well-known mob restaurant (which was actually Brooklyn’s historic Gage & Tollner steakhouse) and threatened him, demanding he continue working with Nasso and pay $150,000 per film for the privilege.
Seagal didn’t break any arms or throw people through windows, as one might expect from his movies. Instead, the actor looked petrified during the encounter. The mobsters had a good laugh a Seagal’s expense, mocking him and acknowledging that the scene was right out of a Seagal movie, except Seagal was no hero. The mobsters, Anthony “Sonny” Ciccone, and Primo Cassarino, wished they’d had a gun so they could see the look on his face.
We know this because Seagal would eventually hand over a large sum of cash—upwards of $700,000—and the FBI was investigating mob activities on New York’s waterfront involving Gotti and his men. Gotti at the time was the acting Gambino boss for brother John, who was in prison. The Seagal discussion was caught on a federal wiretap. and investigators were able to corroborate Seagal’s claims. Nasso denied the claims that he was a Gambino family associate, telling reporters that all he wanted was the money that Seagal owed him after reneging on the contract deal.
But the FBI reports and wiretaps say otherwise. The mafiosi involved with the shakedown were some of the Gambino family’s most notorious capos and soldiers. The actor knew he was on deadly ground when Cassarino and Ciccone accompanied Nasso on a visit to the actor’s Los Angeles home in March 2001, claiming he owed them $3 million. Seagal eventually paid Nasso and the mafiosi.
Rather than hunt down and kill the Gambinos in revenge for the shakedown—something one of his action movie characters would certainly do—Seagal went to authorities. But it was the already ongoing investigation that was able to force a guilty plea from Nasso. Seagal did testify for the prosecution in the Gotti case.
In 2004, the former action movie producer was sentenced on extortion and conspiracy charges. He spent a year in prison and was forced to pay a $75,000 fine. Seagal went on to make a series of direct-to-video action movies, averaging about two per year since 2003, at least that’s what it seems like, because there sure are a lot of them.
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