GARY DANIELS

I had a remarkable experience with Gary Daniels when he visited Ho Chi Minh City for an interview with my colleague, Michael Arnold. After the interview, I had a precious 20 minutes to capture his portrait.

Disliking the idea of passive and expressionless portrait shots during interviews, I decided to observe Gary during Michael’s interview and visualize the perfect shot in my head. With his strong physique of a kickboxing athlete and action star, Gary would look perfect in a dark space, with controlled lighting to create subtle shadows on his face and muscles.

To set the right atmosphere, I suggested we move to a nearby gym. Gary agreed to my idea and actively collaborated. Using the gym’s equipment, combined with natural light and Michael’s assistance with a reflector, we created strong, high-contrast lighting to highlight the depth in Gary’s eyes and expressions. The result exceeded my expectations, capturing the character and talent of this exceptional actor from the very first shot.

Gary Edward Daniels (born May 9, 1963) is an English actor, producer, martial artist, and former world light heavyweight kickboxing champion. Daniels began studying martial arts at the age of 8. In his teens, he became a competitive kickboxer. In 1980, Daniels moved to the US to pursue his athletic career and achieved many accomplishments.Daniels is also the leading man in many action films, starting with Final Reprisal (1988) and The Secret of King Mahis Island (1988), Capital Punishment (1991), American Streetfighter (1992), Deadly Target (1994), Fist of the North Star (1995), Bloodmoon (1996), Recoil, (1997), Spoiler (1998), Misfire (2014), Skin Traffik (2015), etc. He has appeared in films such as: City Hunter (1993), The Legend of Bruce Lee (2008), Tekken, (2009), The Expendables (2010), I Am Vengeance (2018), Kungfu (2021), etc.