It hurts to write this article, but legendary stuntman and martial artist Steven Lambert has passed away aged 69.
If you’ve ever seen any action film from the 80’s and 90’s, you would have seen Lambert’s work. He was a notable villain in 1994’s Timecop, where he had a memorable rooftop showdown with Van Damme and he was a vicious serial killer in the James Woods film Cop.
Mr. Lambert was a renowned martial artist and stunt performer who had won multiple awards for his outstanding work in both fields. He was also a published writer who released a biography a short time ago about his childhood in New York to his time in Hollywood as a performer and highly-respected stunt co-ordinator.
His film work consists of such bonafide classics as Revenge of the Ninja, American Ninja, Cop, Remo: The Adventure Begins, Relentless II, John Carpenter’s Vampires, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Total Recall and dozens of other blockbusters.
My introduction to his enormous screen presence was when he portrayed serial killer Bobby Franco in the vastly underrated 1988 thriller Cop. Mr. Lambert was extremely menacing as the villain and his performance stayed with me long after the film was over.
Over the years, thanks to social media, I got the chance to correspond with him. It’s not often that your childhood heroes end up being as cool and awesome as you hope, and Mr. Lambert was more than brilliant. He took time to answer questions and always dished out great anecdotes about his work. Such a gentlemen. And a tragic loss to the world.
My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.
Bless you, Steven. Thank you for all the joy you brought. RIP.