Is Keanu Reeves The Greatest Action Star To Do His Own Stunts?

Bruce Lee was the king of martial arts movies. It's unlikely that anyone will ever top him. His 1973 film Enter the Dragon is considered the ultimate classic in the genre. Some other popular pictures in which he starred are The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, and The Way of the Dragon. 

Watching Lee do martial arts is like watching Fred Astaire dance. You're seeing someone with real grace, who has mastered the form as well as it can be mastered. His excellence was born of anguish. As a teenager, he joined a street gang and got into some trouble. He decided to channel his energies into studying kung fu, learning how to fight from the legendary Master Yip Man. 

The student ultimately became the teacher. Lee taught Wing Chun and Jeet Kune Do, the latter of which is a form he personally developed. That led him to him being cast in the TV show The Green Hornet and, later, in films, where he demonstrated Jeet Kune Do to appreciative audiences worldwide.

Jet Li has been making movies since the early 1980s, most of them martial arts flicks. In his native China, he became a star via high-octane brawlers like Fist of Legend and The Master. During the 2000s, he went Hollywood, appearing in big studio fare, including Romeo Must Die, Kiss of the Dragon, and The One. He even joined forces with a bunch of other big-name action stars for The Expendables and its sequels. 

Li is one of those actors who has been able to very effectively utilize his skills in a cinematic format. He started studying Wushu as a child. Later, he competed in tournaments, winning five men's national championships. His debut film, 1982's Shaolin Temple, was crafted around his abilities. When it became a gigantic hit in China, other offers came to bring Wushu to the screen. 

To Li, it's more than just doing his thing in front of a camera. He attempts to let the style of the moves help define the character. He explained to Kung Fu Magazine, "With an action movie, the most important thing is how you describe the character. And use martial arts to make this more clear. What are they thinking, what are they fighting?"

Keanu Reeves has appeared in all kinds of movies. but when he works in action, it seems to yield the most popular results. Speed and the John Wick franchise are among his best-loved works. But it was, of course, The Matrix that really paved the way for him to become an A-list action hero. For that movie's complex fight sequences, Reeves studied Jiu-Jitsu, Wushi, boxing, and Krav Maga.

He later went on to train in Judo and karate. These skills, along with weapons training he underwent, allowed the actor to do the vast majority of his own stunts in John Wick and its two sequels. Because Reeves could really perform the moves, director Chad Stahelski was able to use longer, unbroken shots in the fight scenes. There was little need to conceal a stunt double in the editing, as some stars require. 

Even as he gets older, Reeves insists on doing as much as he can. "I feel fit and healthy but it’s a lot harder for me to execute some of the moves the way I would have 20 years ago or when I was doing the Matrix films," he told the South China Morning Post. "You also get very sore and stiff and you’re not anxious to keep doing take after take. But I would never let a stunt man do the work for me. I have to do it myself even if it's painful sometimes."

Chuck Norris is somewhat unique among action heroes. Aside from successfully working on both the big screen (Missing in Action, Code of Silence) and the small (Walker, Texas Ranger), he has also inspired his own line of jokes that trade on his tough-guy persona. Among them: The flu gets a Chuck Norris shot every year.

Those jokes can be made because Norris honestly is tough. He began studying judo while serving in the military back in 1960. From there, he learned the karate form known as tang soo do, eventually earning a black belt. Norris went on to become the World Professional Middleweight Karate Champion a staggering six years in a row. His expertise in the area served him well when pursuing acting work, as he was able to draw upon it to establish himself as a macho man who could do his own fighting in front of the camera. 

Norris knew what his capabilities were and attempted to transfer them to film as meaningfully as he could. For one of his early films, Good Guys Wear Black, the actor came up with the story himself. "This was a screenplay that I helped develop and write," he said. "I peddled it around Hollywood for four years before I was able to finally make it a reality."

Jean-Claude Van Damme announced himself a serious player in the action movie game during the late '80s when he starred in a string of successful low-budget martial arts flicks like Bloodsport, Kickboxer, and No Retreat, No Surrender. He went mainstream in the '90s with major studio productions including TimeCop and Sudden Death. Even now, when he's passed the age of 60, he still has viability as an action star, although he's gone back to independently made fare. 

In fact, it was his skill at martial arts that captured filmmakers' interest to begin with. JCVD began studying Shotokan karate as a preteen. He went on to become a karate champion, scoring 44 victories and only four defeats between 1976 and 1980. To help with the fluidity of his moves, Van Damme additionally studied ballet. That background in dance influenced the famous split he's demonstrated multiple times over the years.

When you think of Jason Statham, you automatically think of action. Only occasionally during his extensive career has he ventured outside that realm. The vast majority of his work has been in action pictures, including Crank, Hobbs & Shaw, The Expendables, and The Transporter. 

Part of the reason he's been so successful in action is that it comes naturally to him. Statham is extremely athletic, having once been a diver on Great Britain's national team who competed in the 1990 Commonwealth Games. (Regrettably, he never quite made it to the Olympics.) Additionally, he studied martial arts and boxing as a teenager - skills that continue to come in handy as he fights bad guys in movies. 

Although he denies any overly significant connection between his diving and his acting, Statham does acknowledge his years in the water teaching him some important lessons. He told IGN, "It teaches you discipline, focus, and certainly keeps you out of trouble."