As calm and collected as action stars come, Seagal was once thought of as a seriously brooding action star - the like which hadn't been seen before. However, after 'Above the Law' and 'Hard to Kill' critics began to see him as a one trick pony, and by the end of the 90s he was no longer in demand and Warner Brothers terminated his lucrative contract.

Before becoming another direct to DVD hero, Seagal made his greatest film: 'Under Siege'. He played a Navy SEAL turned chef - a CV which comes in handy when some bad guys (headed by a wildly over the top Tommy Lee Jones) invades his warship. He followed it up with his dreadful directoral debut 'On Deadly Ground' - an eco thriller in which he played an environmental agent saving the Alascan people from an evil oil company headed by Michael Caine.