When Larry Lam isn't teaching martial arts at Studio Kicks in Los Gatos, he works as a professional stuntman.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Reel Fighter
When Hollywood calls, Larry Lam falls
By Gloria I. Wang
Imagine yourself getting ready for work, then noticing that you are seated between two of Hollywood's leading ladies. For longtime Los Gatos resident Larry Lam, that's just a typical day away from his martial arts studio, working as a Hollywood stuntman.
"I was sitting in a makeup chair," Lam says, "and I looked to my right, and there's Salma Hayek. I looked to my left, and Lara Flynn Boyle was sitting there, and they were talking over me."
Lam, 31, was on the set of the unreleased Warner Brothers film Chain of Fools, starring Steve Zahn and Jeff Goldblum. He performed as the stunt double for 20-year-old Elijah Wood, who was recently named by E! Online as a one of the hottest young actors around. Because Wood has a fair complexion and curly brown hair, Lam was covered from head to toe in a light body paint that left him unrecognizable to the cast and crew.
Lam is full of similar anecdotes from his 12 years of experience as a professional stuntman in film and television. He's played characters from an Asian gangster to an American Gladiator-type "bad guy" to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Leonardo. His colleagues have ranged from Jet Li to Wesley Snipes to Aaliyah to Jessica Alba. He refuses to be starstruck, however, calling celebrities "normal" and "nice."
"I get embarrassed when people call me an actor. I happen to do films and I do action in films," he says. "I'm not a star, I'm not an actor, I do stunts."
Photographs by Kathy De La Torre
Larry Lam instructs a second-level kickboxing class.
Just as important as Lam's work as a stuntman is his status as martial arts champion and Los Gatos businessowner. Lam, who is a fourth-degree black belt in tae kwon do, owns martial arts school Studio Kicks, on N. Santa Cruz Avenue. The first Studio Kicks opened in Saratoga a decade ago, but merged with the newer Los Gatos location in 1997 to gain more space.
At Studio Kicks, Lam teaches kickboxing classes whenever he's in town. "I'm a substitute teacher," he says jokingly. "I clean the bathrooms here." Lam, small-framed but muscular, jumps around to the music with a seemingly limitless amount of energy, black ponytail bouncing up and down as he shouts commands to his students--"Jab! You guys are doing a great job! One! Two!"
Lam started training in martial arts as a 4-year-old in Hong Kong, just before he moved to Canada with his parents in 1974. At age 16, he moved to Los Gatos to continue his training, and martial arts has been his life since. In exchange for room and board, Lam helped his coach teach classes and cleaned the studio.
At Los Gatos High School, Lam attended classes from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., then trained the rest of the day. Oftentimes he missed school twice a week because he was competing out-of-state. Lam says that his teachers supported his career, allowing him to catch up on missed assignments. He spent so much time training and teaching kids, instead of at school, he says, that some of the parents of his students forced him to do his homework.
After graduating from high school in 1989, Lam focused on martial arts, deciding not to pursue higher education. "I knew what I wanted to do," he explains. Despite not enjoying school, Lam continues to preach good grades and discipline to his students.
Photographs by Kathy De La Torre
Larry Lam instructs a second-level kickboxing class.
While on a 13-city North America Sport Karate Association (NASKA) tour in 1989, Lam got his big break in the entertainment industry. At an Atlanta competition, he was approached by a film producer. A week later, 19-year-old Lam was on his way to London to play Leonardo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II--The Secret of the Ooze.
The movie led to Lam's reprise of the role in 1993's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III and the spread of Lam's reputation by word of mouth. Stunt coordinators hire stuntmen by referral, not by résumé, Lam says. "If you do a good job, they'll want you back. If you mess up, you'll never work again."
Ordinarily, Lam receives phone calls from stunt coordinators, asking him to fly out to a set immediately. For example, in 1997, Lam was called at 2 p.m. by a stunt coordinator who wanted to know if he was available for a job that evening. "They said, 'Can you come to Canada at 8 p.m.? Oh, and by the way, pack for six months,'" Lam says. For the next six months, Lam commuted back and forth between Canada and Los Gatos every weekend.
Lam fought Jet Li in 1989's The Defector, before Li was famous in the United States; played an immigrant in Shanghai Noon; was kicked in the knee by Wesley Snipes (whom Lam calls "humble" and "a powerful martial artist") in The Art of War; and was an "overpaid extra" in Romeo Must Die.
While filming a scene with Tara Reid in this year's Josie and the Pussycats, Lam says, the actress "all of a sudden lost it and started slugging me in the mouth." Lam speculates that Reid had forgotten her choreography and, instead, started fighting on instinct. "The director ran out and was like, 'What's going on?!'" Lam says.
Photograph courtesy of Larry Lam
Most of the people in the background are local residents on the set of 'XKO Kickboxing,' Larry Lam's exercise video.
Most recently, Lam appeared in two episodes of "Dark Angel" with Jessica Alba, who made the fight scenes easy to stage because she's athletic, Lam says.
At 5 feet 8 inches and 150 pounds, Lam finds that he is usually cast as the Asian gang member or a "bad guy"--roles sometimes taken too seriously by audiences. For two seasons, Lam played an antagonistic character, Warlock, on the syndicated children's television series, "WMAC Masters." The character was so believable to some fans that Lam received hate mail for the first time, getting pages and emails saying, "Give it back," in reference to a plot line.
Once, Lam says, he left work and found a woman sitting in his Jeep, asking for some help with stunts. On a different occasion, Lam and Richard Branden, a Studio Kicks instructor and fellow stuntman, had to leave Jamaica in a hurry, because people wanted to hurt their "Masters" characters and were overturning cars.
Being a stuntman, Lam says, is not as easy as it seems. In addition to long hours, the work itself is grueling at times. "You have to make sure that your timing is impeccable," Lam says. Stuntmen must be aware of several things at once: positioning themselves carefully so that punches will appear to fall perfectly, not blocking the camera's view of the actor and staying within the frame.
"Your heart just starts to go--" Lam thumps his chest, mimicking a heartbeat, "--and when they call 'action,' your heart just starts pounding." Although the work can be exhilarating, Lam says that he is not an "adrenaline junkie" and stays away from "hairy stuff," such as jumping off the roof of a speeding train. Besides, Lam says that he is scared of heights.
Since Lam sticks to fights and stunts, such as rolling down the stairs, his injuries have been few and, for the most part, minor. He suffers from cuts, bumps and bruises often, but says, "You can't really cry about stuff like that because it's embarrassing."
Photograph courtesy of Larry Lam
Wesley Snipes holds an ice pack to Larry Lam's knee after accidentally hurting it on the Montreal set of 'The Art of War' in 1999.
Still, there is a chance of serious injury in Lam's line of work. His worst accident was on the set of Turtles II. The four "turtles" were inside a hanging net when the rope holding the net broke. All four tumbled to the ground: " Michelangelo blew his knee out, "Donatello" crushed his foot and required amputation on some toes and Lam received head and back injuries. Doctors found a blood clot in Lam's head as a result of the injuries. "I couldn't work for six months," Lam says.
While he was expanding his career as a stuntman, Lam was also making a name for himself at home. As a teenager, Lam had wanted only to become a national champion. As he matured, however, his goals changed. Through his stunt work and tours, Lam found that many of the people he met treated him as a celebrity, and he rarely had time to spend with friends.
"Sometimes you lose reality," Lam says. On movie sets, he was pampered by assistants, who picked him up, gave him spending money, fed him and followed him around. "You think that everybody's supposed to treat you that way."
That realization led to a revelation of what home meant. Growing up in different foster homes and group homes, Lam had lacked family stability. "I knew who my real parents were, but I didn't live with them," he says. Finally, "I realized that at the studio, my family was real," Lam says.
Whenever he came home, Lam saw that the people "liked us for us"; he had watched the kids at the studio grow up and had felt the support of the community. To "give back" to the "fantastic people" in the communities of Los Gatos and Saratoga, Lam opened the Saratoga Studio Kicks in 1991, and the Los Gatos location in 1996. Originally, Lam had business partners in both studios, but eventually bought both out.
Photograph courtesy of Larry Lam
Larry Lam and singer/actress Aaliyah and two other stuntmen pose on the set of 'Romeo Must Die,' shot in Vancouver in summer 2000.
In 1998, Lam and then-partner Rick Donaldson were the victims of extortion by David Slavin--recently sentenced to five years in prison--who used threats of violence to collect money from Lam and Donaldson. Slavin had falsely claimed that Lam and Donaldson owed him $140,000, and had threatened to cut off Lam's fingers if they did not pay. Lam declines to comment on the case, but does say that it cast an undeserved bad light on Studio Kicks.
Through the years, Studio Kicks grew in physical size, number of students and classes offered. Lam employs several top-rated martial artists as instructors--Richard Branden, from the "Masters" show, is a 10-time North American Sport Karate Association champion and a six-time world kickboxing champion.
Last year, Studio Kicks released Lam's workout video, XKO Kickboxing. Lam says that the project was a local effort; most of the investors and students who appear in the video are from Los Gatos. The video was filmed at a Fremont warehouse owned by one of Lam's students.
Lam finds fulfillment in teaching classes at Studio Kicks. Los Gatos resident Tracy Berg lost 103 pounds from dieting and being with Studio Kicks for the last year and a half. "I'm totally big-time addicted to this," Berg says, who takes kickboxing classes six times a week. Berg has been to other kickboxing classes around the area and out of state, but says that Lam focuses more on technique than other teachers, and gives individualized attention. Lam "puts 150 percent into this place," Berg says.
Larry Lam's professional publicity photo belies his action on screen.
Photograph courtesy of Larry Lam
Lam finds that martial arts often helps kids, especially the ones with self-esteem problems and those who have attention-deficit disorder. "Where else do you get 20 kids in a room, give them a weapon and they all stand still?" Lam asks.
Shinku Sharma, a Saratoga resident, is a kickboxing student and has taken her daughters to Studio Kicks for the past four years. Sharma finds that Lam fosters high self-esteem in her daughters. "They always say, 'Do your best,' " Sharma says. "And my best might be different from your best ... Nobody feels embarrassed."
At Studio Kicks, the accomplishments and reputations of Lam and other instructors aren't widely discussed. Sometimes, Lam says, "We use it as a tool to trick the kids into listening to us more." That's why, when actress Nia Peeples recently went to Studio Kicks to work out, nobody knew who she was, let alone that she's a good friend of Lam's. Peeples' husband, stunt coordinator Lauro Chartrand, is one of Lam's mentors. And not many people paid attention to the Chinese man who recently dropped by to watch a class, not knowing he was Yuen Woo-Ping, stunt choreographer for The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Lam lives in Los Gatos--"I rent," he says wryly--with his Hawaiian-born wife, Leslie, and their 6-year-old son, Keanu. Keanu gets to meet his father's famous friends and then watches them on television, or in movies, confusing characters with the real person. Once, Lam's friend's character was killed in the series, "Mortal Kombat," and Keanu was so agitated that he made Lam call the actor to make sure he was still alive. "His reality is a little bit different," Lam says, laughing. "He thinks Jackie Chan is his friend."
Saratoga, California Since 1955
