Thrusty Thursday: Darren Shahlavi

Think of Darren Shahlavi as Zachary Quinto on steroids. Not to say that the Iranian-English martial artist / actor's physique comes from anything other than hard work, as far as I'm aware. But those eyebrows, that subtly evil glint in the squinty eye…a more feral, jacked, hairy-chested Quinto. Definitely.

I know Shahlavi solely from the 2010 film Ip Man 2 (which I'll be reviewing next week) a sequel that surpassed its equally beautiful but less exciting predecessor. Shahlavi plays a thoroughly hateable "foreign devil", an English prize fighter who bullies, mocks, and grievously injures the local Kung Fu practitioners of Hong Kong in this movie set in 1950. Colonial tension, you can has!

Shahlavi was born in Manchester, England in 1972, and he's been training in a variety of martial arts since he was seven. He's been a gazillion and one movies of varying quality, most of them martial arts related. Without further ado, a man-tage from the film: