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Thread: Celebrities studying martial arts?

  1. #166
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    continued

    from previous post
    Bündchen kept herself out of the public eye for months. "I felt like my pregnancy was a sacred moment for me. I stayed in Boston and I didn't work apart from the contracts I have, and then I only let them use my face."

    Today she left the apartment and the baby for the first time to pose for one of her advertising clients, which explains the chignon. "I got to the studio and I felt like I was E.T.—whoa, what's going on? Hair and makeup? I hadn't looked at myself in a mirror for a month and a half. I'd been in my house, in a cocoon with my kids, my husband, my dogs. Usually, as I walk through the door into that atmosphere, I already feel different. There's a button that goes On and I'm On. And when I go On, there is almost no me; there is just a character who is doing all this. This time it wasn't like that. I've been really inside with my husband and my baby, and everything is changed. But the client still deserves respect and professionalism, and I got a little bit concerned because I wasn't feeling it. Makeup was done, hair was done, and I looked in the mirror and I still wasn't seeing the person who's a model."

    "Who was the woman you saw in the mirror?" I ask.

    "For the first time, I think I actually saw me—the inside—instead of the persona."

    The persona turned up for the second photo, much to the relief of the photographer David Sims and the Brazilian client.

    Gisele started early; by fifteen she was in a "model apartment" in New York, or folded into airline coach seats to go to model in Italy, France, Japan. There's a small tattoo of a star inside her left wrist. "My grandmother told me and my sisters that everyone has a special star. I looked at my star every night before bed, just like brushing my teeth. When I came to New York and I opened the window of the thirty-fifth-floor apartment, there's light pollution and fog, and I couldn't see my star. So I drew it on my wrist with a pen, but it kept washing away. Then I went to a tattoo parlor on Second Avenue and had it done. It was something I had been missing, and now, no matter where I went, it came with me."

    She consciously created the Gisele persona as she started to become a star herself. "I was in the fashion shows in Milan, I was seventeen, I was doing like 100 shows. People were asking, 'How does it feel to be the model of the moment?' It was hard for me to answer as myself. I barely spoke English. I thought, I have to give my best because they trust me with that. I invented this other person, and she could do everything. She wasn't afraid; she was able to be ballsy and risky and sexy or androgynous. She was bold. I had to believe in myself as this person that was strong, up-front, invincible, and positive, who knew what she was doing, even though I really didn't.

    "I've worked for fourteen years, but I don't think anybody in the business really knows me, because there is that other person."

    Gisele Bündchen's private life has kept its mystery, and she's let her avatar, the übermodel, take all the flashbulbs. Some years ago, when she felt that her life was nothing more than "get up, take pictures, go to sleep, get up, take pictures," she took off six months. She also logged on to Amazon.com and typed in SPIRITUAL BOOKS, which led to a passion for the writings of Miguel Ruiz, which taught her to rely on her own instinct: "The more you trust your intuition, the more empowered you become, the stronger you become, and the happier you become."

    Three years ago, when Gisele met Tom Brady, she moved up to Boston to be with him. It was a vocational as well as an emotional turning point.

    "I'm a person who normally works 300 days a year, and here I am in Boston in this apartment and Tom's playing, and what do I do here? On my Web site, a lot of girls were asking me questions about feeling awkward. I wanted to work with girls who were fourteen to sixteen." She wanted to be heard and chose the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers—"They take care of girls from shelters, girls who have been abused. I came up with a nine-week program and went to talk to them about empowerment and self-esteem."

    It was a shock.

    "I thought I was going to be able to save them, guide them. When I got there they were like, 'Who are you?' There were a lot of Latina and black girls. In Brazil, everyone is a mixture, and no one thinks about it. In America, maybe you have more problems with that. It took me a week or two just to get them to sit down with me and talk. I had my yoga teacher come up from New York to teach them yoga. I wanted to share something, but I ended up realizing that you cannot save anybody. I forced it, and it didn't quite go through."

    Sejaa was born of that frustration, as a way for Bündchen to impart some of what she has learned, but by subliminal means.

    "I wanted to teach girls to love themselves and take care of their bodies. What is the first thing you see every morning? Your face! What do you put every day on your face? Cream! I have made the simplest, purest cream—an everyday cream—but it comes with an affirmation."

    Her manufacturers, she says, "were ready to kill me. I wanted the cream to be organic—they explained that if it's organic, it's alive, and that means it can't survive for a long time." The products are now called "natural," the ingredients are held to a high standard of purity, and the preservative is coconut oil.

    She also wanted a mud mask. A real mud mask.

    "When I was a teenager, I had pimples—oh, God, every time someone looked at my face I thought they were looking at my pimples. I put mud on my face to dry them out, and it worked. "I can do all this because I'm financing it on my own terms, and if I want to give away 5 percent of everything I make, no one can tell me not to."

    Sejaa will not be sold in stores but on a Web site, to create a community—"So I can give my little tips, and it's not me telling anyone to have an awakening."

    There's a noise in the front hall.

    "It's my hubbeeeeeee!" says Gisele.

    Into the dark room comes Tom Brady. He's tall, with a deep voice, the face of a young boy, and longish hair. Wearing a dark-blue zipped-up sweater, he treads the carpet with sweetly controlled impatience. Vida the Yorkie wakes from her slumber and goes berserk. Some swift Tom Brady moves prevent Vida from ****ing with joy on the carpet, but the interview is going to be cut short. Patricia brings in the packaging for Sejaa, a recycled-cardboard box with an interesting sliding tab that reveals different—empowering—keywords behind it, and inside, three products: the day cream, a night cream, and the mud mask, along with a bamboo washcloth.

    Gisele hands Benjamin to Patricia, rises, and unfolds, all length and purpose, and gets me moving: I'm whisked across the hall to receive a bunch of Miguel Ruiz books in the open kitchen, taken to another floor to see the baby crib and the vast collection of essential oils that have gone into Sejaa, then kissed and hugged before she bathes Benjamin.

    There are two secrets, says Gisele on parting:

    "The first is wake up in the morning and be grateful you are here, alive and healthy. And the second is: Give."

    I follow Patricia's cowboy boots back up the stairs. The rain is still pelting down, black and icy. "How do I call a cab?" I ask.

    No need for a cab. Tom Brady drives me back to my hotel.

    "Earth Mother" has been edited for Vogue.com; the complete story appears in the April 2010 issue of Vogue.

    wish there was a pic of Gisele doing kung fu...
    Gene Ching
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  2. #167
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    Aiden Quinn

    Aidan Quinn Turns Up His Fight Game for "Unknown White Male"

    Aidan Quinn is happy the producer of the current action film he's filming didn't see his boozy brawl in "The Eclipse," which is just hitting theaters.

    The 51-year-old actor told PopcornBiz he probably would never have gotten the martial arts-heavy role in "Unknown White Male," which he is shooting with Liam Neeson and January Jones, if the folks behind the flick had seen him as a drunken mauler.

    "I love that 'Eclipse' fight. I think it's great," Quinn said. "But it would not get me a martial arts job at all. I don't think he would have hired me if he had seen that fight."

    In the award-winning drama, "The Eclipse," Quinn's character has an ugly, drunken fight with his love rival (Ciaran Hinds) which verges on the "stupid and ridiculous" with just enough menace to make it scary. In the just underway "Unknown White Male," Quinn plays a man who might have stolen the identity of Liam Neeson's character, and the fight sequences are paramount to the story.

    "What I am going through here is literally hour after hour of practice, going again and again and again," he said of the fight scenes on set in Germany. "I'm doing intricate martial arts with directions that have to be followed to a T."

    The fights are a close combat style of martial arts called Wushu. Quinn wearily admits the hours of work and the combat are taking a toll on his body.

    "I've got a hot bath running and when this is done," he said, "I'm going to enjoy it."
    I had no idea who this was.
    [IMG]http://media.nbcchicago.com/images/267*200/AidanQuinnNBC.jpg[/IMG]
    Will we need a Unknown White Male thread soon?
    Gene Ching
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  3. #168
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    "I've got a hot bath running and when this is done," he said, "I'm going to enjoy it."
    You can share my bath anytime babe!

    I've been in love with that man forever...*sigh*
    "The true meaning of a given movement in a form is not its application, but rather the unlimited potential of the mind to provide muscular and skeletal support for that movement." Gregory Fong

  4. #169
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    Pete Doherty

    I wonder what style of tai chi he's doing.
    Pete Doherty turns to Tai Chi as he prepares for comeback
    By Sophie Eager Apr 8, 2010, 13:25 GMT

    Rocker Pete Doherty has revealed he has turned to Tai Chi as he prepares to make his comeback with The Libertines.

    The 31-year-old singer recently made up with bandmate Carl Barat and he is now preparing for the return of the band by taking up the martial art.

    He said: 'Tai Chi is great for me. It's all about balance and serenity.'

    Doherty also revealed that his other band Babyshambles are 'no more' and that it has been hard to beat his addiction problems.

    He said: 'Any addict will tell you every day is like a running battle. But I'm dead happy at the moment, in spite of myself I suppose, because I'm quite a miserable sod.'
    Gene Ching
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  5. #170
    Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
    I wonder what style of tai chi he's doing.
    I'd be willing to bet he doesn't remember.

    The moment they ask us to choose between two different paths, the implicit message is that we can only follow one. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path

  6. #171
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    Below is a quote from a 2007 article in the Guardian


    Chartered sports and exercise psychologist Paul Russell has encountered many people like Tony. "Exercise addiction tends to be a more transient addiction, marking time before the person returns to the basic ones, the drink and drugs. People become addicted to something because there's an underlying unhappiness, and if they haven't sorted out the underlying reasons, via counselling or whatever, they'll have to direct that need to something else."

    Back with Doherty, though, the prognosis could be favourable. Chi gung and tai chi are believed to work in a different way to the types of activity that fit the Sympathetic Arousal Hypothesis. These martial arts stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system - the instiller of calm. Steve Pinnington is a trainer for the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association, and he uses a combination of acupuncture and chi gung on inpatients at drug rehab centres such as those run by Phoenix Futures. "With an addiction, it's all about the sympathetic nervous system; you're stuck in it 24-7, all stress, all agitation. Chi gung does the opposite: it helps you move into the parasympathetic nervous system, it brings about relaxation and real calm.

    "Our clients sit down, and they're agitated and angry. To get them to sit still for 45 minutes would be impossible without the chi gung. I give them a very simple five-finger exercise, and combine it with acupuncture needles, and they move really quickly into the parasympathetic zone. I believe that this primes them for the counselling that's vital for looking at the roots of the addiction. They'd be too angry, too dismissive to do the counselling otherwise."

    Pinnington taught mainstream martial arts for many years, before switching to chi gung. "There was too much ego addiction going on; with chi gung, you're not looking for something to boost your ego, but you're actually dealing with something much more powerful. Coming to chi gung isn't about swapping one addiction for another. It's literally a different mindset."
    "The true meaning of a given movement in a form is not its application, but rather the unlimited potential of the mind to provide muscular and skeletal support for that movement." Gregory Fong

  7. #172
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    I remember one story.

    The Sigung of the first kungfu I studied way way back in the day was himself a student of Daniel Pai. Supposedly they had a body guard type/security/escort service. Anyways, one of the clients was David Lee Roth. Mostly I guess to keep away the crazed groupies or whatever. Apparently he was crazy interested in the kungfu and stuff they would do but the guy being you know, who he is, had some crazy ideas. One time in a meeting with a producer or something, Roth was totally not interested at all. He pretty much just let his manager deal with it. So Sigung was in the corner of the room staying out of it all. Roth comes over and starts asking about iron body and all that. They try to brush him off but he's all persistent. So they tell him so lame story about how you just have to breath with the attack or something like that. Well he goes in the corner and starts practicing his "breathing." Bout 10 minutes later comes back and is all like, "Ok I'm ready." Raises his arms up and demands Sigung start kicking him in the ribs.

    Other story. Sigung was in a chop socky movie once. Just as an extra and stunt man in a fight scene and he used to do some choreography stuff. Don't remember the name but it was waayyyy B-flick. Maybe even C or D. In the scene he plays a bad guy that is dressed up like a chick. Even had this funny wig and makeup. Only time I ever seen Sigung with earrings. He was laying beside a car in one of those big city garages. The hero was a cop that used karate, and apparently he was never issued a sidearm.... So he lays there pretending to be a lady unconscious like from an assault and the cop comes and see what up. Sigung jumps up and pulls a machete out from nowhere and starts doing broadsword techniques.

  8. #173
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    Charlotte Church

    That's a goofy headline - hard to parse - especially as Church is studying karate. I have no idea who this is, but she looks very slim....yes, very slim indeed. Click the link and look at the slideshow for the before and after pics.
    Kung fu dares win for slimmer Church
    By ALEX PEAKE
    Published: Today

    SUPERFIT Charlotte Church is keeping in trim by learning KARATE at a secret SAS training hideout.

    The Over the Rainbow judge, 24, is having martial arts lessons from a beefy ex-Para in Wales' remote Brecon Beacons.

    Pals say she is trying to get as fit as her rugby star boyfriend Gavin Henson, who has just filmed a TV endurance show in the Arctic Circle.

    One said yesterday: "Charlotte's learning karate and jujitsu - as well as having boxercise lessons. It's not the soft stuff, she's insisted on a hardcore regime.

    "You often get people doing it for fun, but she's really determined and takes it to the extreme.

    "She's always had the voice of an angel, now she's got the moves of the Karate Kid too."

    Charlotte, mum to 2½-year-old Ruby and Dexter, one, puts herself through the gruelling exercise sessions at least three times a week.

    She travels from her £1.5million mansion in the Vale of Glamorgan to the mountain hideout where the SAS train for Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Her friend said: "Charlotte's trainer is a martial arts expert who was with the Parachute Regiment and the French Foreign Legion.

    "He also did freelance bodyguarding work and was in Africa five years - so he knows his stuff.

    "Charlotte isn't one of these pampered stars She's really tough. She might be gobby, but she could back it up without a doubt."

    Charlotte, who revealed her sensational new figure last month, has also been spotted training in a Cardiff park.
    Gene Ching
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  9. #174
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    We knew about Downey already

    But now he's fronting Wing Chun on the cover of Men's Journal.


    In the May Issue: Robert Downey Jr.
    Mon, Apr 12, 2010

    In the May Issue: Robert Downey Jr.
    Photo credit: Mark Seliger
    In the May issue of Men’s Journal: Robert Downey Jr. on how an ass-kicking martial art helped him find his focus and resurrect his career, professional BASE jumper Jeb Corliss on his attempt to execute the perilous no-chute landing, and an inside look at the brutal, murderous turf war over a libido-enhancing aphrodisiac fungus in Nepal.

    -

    -
    From Stephen Rodrick’s profile of Robert Downey Jr.:

    On advice for practicing Wing Chun, a martial arts discipline:

    “Seriously, don’t worry about looking like an idiot. It’s like life: The less self-conscious you are, the better it works. And remember, lots of ice and Advil afterward. Trust me on that one.”

    On how Wing Chun helps him cope:

    “This is all about focus. Wing Chun teaches you what to concentrate on, whether you’re here or out in the world dealing with problems. It’s second nature for me now. I don’t even get to the point where there’s a problem.”

    On being reluctant to punch a stuntman full in the mouth while filming Sherlock Holmes:

    “I was like, ‘I can’t or he’s not going to be able to play with his kids this weekend.’ And Guy (Ritchie) was basically saying, ‘He doesn’t have any kids.’ ”

    On if he is worried about burnout from filming and promoting films:

    “You don’t worry about something that has already happened,” he says with resignation. “You don’t need to worry about your car breaking down when you’re already on the side of the street with the hood up. Worrying is done. The hubcaps have already come off going around the corners.”

    On being an actor:

    “This is still art for commerce, at best. I consider myself to be a pain-in-the-ass artist who’s self-aware enough to still be tolerable. While I have a little bit of juice, I try not to rub it in anyone’s face, because it’s just disgusting. And I use the term ‘artist’ loosely.”

    On his Iron Man character Tony Stark’s relationship with his dead father:

    “We’re having Tony go back and really deal with the ramifications of his lack of connection to his dad, his almost professional-stock, prop-smile answers, and how he’d been using Dad’s memory as a weapon against others. He’s really feeling hugely conflicted by assumptions about his dad’s feelings about him and whether or not there’s any real connection between them at the most basic level, which is: You’re not here anymore for this. Is there something you have for me, is there something you left for me, is there some sort of bread-crumb trail I can find that will help fill me at this point in my life?”

    Eric Oram, Downey’s Wing Chun instructor, on working with the actor:

    “When he first came to me, insurance companies wouldn’t bond him for movies; he couldn’t get roles. I told him if he didn’t show up to a lesson, I was going to chop off his toes and feed them back to him. One day he didn’t turn up, and I told him goodbye. Then he had a couple of producers call me and vouch for him, saying, ‘He was with us in a meeting; he didn’t have a phone. It’s our fault. Don’t cut his head off.’ He has committed himself to it ever since and turned his life around.”

    Guy Ritchie, on working with the actor:

    “The word to describe Robert is hard. I know that’s ****ing ridiculous in describing an actor, but he really can scrap. He’s done time in jail, which didn’t exactly soften him up. He has a real physicality that is pretty ****ing amazing.”
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
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  10. #175
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    LOL!!!! After reading this: The word to describe Robert is hard. I know that’s ****ing ridiculous in describing an actor, but he really can scrap. He’s done time in jail, which didn’t exactly soften him up. He has a real physicality that is pretty ****ing amazing.”

    I can't get the image of Robert Downey Jr. having a throw down brawl in the prision yard with bikers and gang bangers out of my head....... And it's a pretty **** funny image.

  11. #176
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    I love this guy as an actor and he SEEMS to have gotten his life in the right direction.
    Psalms 144:1
    Praise be my Lord my Rock,
    He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !

  12. #177
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    Same here, I've always liked him as an actor too.

    And it appears he is getting his life back together with the help of his Wing Chun training, which is a great endorsement for CMA.

    And I have to admit his fight scenes in Sherlock Holms impressed me, they were pretty tight and entertaining.....although maybe a little bit too Wing Chunny to be late 19th century England.

  13. #178
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    Quote Originally Posted by SnowDog View Post
    Same here, I've always liked him as an actor too.

    And it appears he is getting his life back together with the help of his Wing Chun training, which is a great endorsement for CMA.

    And I have to admit his fight scenes in Sherlock Holms impressed me, they were pretty tight and entertaining.....although maybe a little bit too Wing Chunny to be late 19th century England.
    Same he was a friggin basket case in the late 80s and most of the 90s looks to have gotten his life together, seems like a decent guy bet hes a blast at a barbeque.
    Last edited by solo1; 04-14-2010 at 09:53 AM. Reason: spelling correction

  14. #179
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    Britney Spears!

    Well, her kids at least.

    Monday, May 10, 2010
    Britney Spears: Karate Mom

    Ever the doting mother, Britney Spears was spotted taking her boys to their Karate class on Saturday afternoon (May 8).

    The “Toxic” songstress escorted Jayden James and Sean Preston to a Studio City dojo with the help of her nanny and an assistant.
    Gene Ching
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  15. #180
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    Russell Brand

    Russell Brand turns to martial arts to shape up for his wedding to Katy Perry
    By Daily Mail Reporter
    Last updated at 1:36 PM on 10th May 2010

    Since relocating to Los Angeles with fiancée Katy Perry, Russell Brand has embraced the healthy Californian lifestyle.

    She's constantly at the gym and now it appears he's looking to add a few muscles to his skinny frame in time for the couple's wedding later this year.

    The 34-year-old has started taking lessons in Krav Maga.

    The martial art, which features hand-to-hand combat, derives from Israel and the former Czechoslovakia.

    Spotted having a private lesson in Hollywood Hills yesterday, Brand showed off his surprisingly muscular figure in a pair of burgundy shorts and white T-shirt.

    The funnyman had also tied his long, scraggy hair up in a bun.

    After working up a sweat with his trainer, Brand then met up Perry to attend actress Rosario Dawson's 31st birthday party.

    The Seven Pounds star hired an area at the Moroccan restaurant Tagine in Beverly Hills.

    Perry, 25, was unusually covered up in a city nightscape tunic and leggings, while Brand wore his signature skinny jeans, boots and leather jacket.

    Following their engagement on New Year's Eve in India, Perry and Brand are hoping to return their later this year to tie the knot.

    In the meanwhile, Perry has been busy recording her new album - a follow-up to her 2008 breakthrough hit LP One Of The Boys.
    Dinner date: Brand later joined his fiancée Katy Perry for dinner at Tagine in Beverly Hills last night

    The upcoming LP will be her third album. She released her debut disc Katy Hudson, a gospel-rock album, in 2001.

    She said: 'Well, I have to plan my new album, first and then I'm going to get to my wedding - but I'm really excited about that, too.

    'Russell is a real match for me - in previous relationships I feel like I've just steamrolled the guy, so it's nice to find someone I can't do that to.'

    Brand proposed to Perry after fewer than four months of dating on New Year's Eve, during a romantic trip to India's Taj Rambagh Palace hotel.

    They are hoping to return to India later this year to tie the knot, Perry's friend and bridesmaid Rihanna revealed last month.

    Rihanna told US radio DJ Ryan Seacrest during a recent interview on his KIIS FM show: 'She put (organising the hen night) on me last week.

    'I have to come up with something cool because she's getting married in India so I'm like "OK, now what do I do to match that?"

    'That's at the end of the year so we've got some time to plan that.'
    Couldn't have been that private a lesson if they got pics
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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