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Sean Patrick Flanery is in love. It’s a love that’s changed his life, something he’d not trade for $10 million. A love for Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.

As opposed to an actor who dabbled in the martial arts — perhaps for a role — Flanery is a lifelong martial artist who dabbles in acting. Starting with taekwondo at age 9, not a week has gone by in the 46 years since that he hasn’t devoted time to one art or another and he currently teaches BJJ at Hollywood BJJ Houston. Had BJJ reached the U.S. a bit sooner and mixed martial arts emerged a little earlier, it would “100 percent” have been his trajectory in life.

While some may know Flanery only as an actor — portraying a young Indiana Jones, his roles in Powder, Suicide Kings, The Dead Zone, the final season of Dexter or, of course, cult favorite The Boondock Saints — and others know him as a teacher — one who helps them navigate a world of hooks, holds and locks on the mat — those two worlds will meet for Born a Champion, a martial arts drama which will see release on streaming platforms and in select theaters on Friday, January 22, with DVD and Blu-ray coming on January 26. In it, he plays Mickey Kelley, an armed forces veteran who’s also dedicated his life to BJJ and a man on whose life martial arts also has a life-altering, transformative effect. Flanery co-wrote the film with director Alex Ranarivelo and stars alongside Katrina Bowden and Dennis Quaid. For MMA fans, veteran fighter Edson Barboza makes his acting debut.

Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is one of Sean Patrick Flanery’s loves and Born a Champion is his love letter to the art. He sat down to talk about the film — among other things — and his passion is self-evident. He also offered a glimmer of hope that fans may one day see him and on-screen brother Norman Reedus together again as the Brothers MacManus in a future Boondock Saints project.

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Alan Ruck will always be Cameron Frye to some fans. A talented character actor with a career spanning nearly four decades, he enjoys a legacy that is, on some level, inextricably tied to his turn as the title character’s best friend in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

That’s the kind of thing that could rankle a Hollywood type with a big ego, but not Ruck. In memorializing the film’s director, teen-comedy virtuoso John Hughes, he called it “the best part I ever had in a movie,” and credited the late director with any success that he’s enjoyed since the mid ’80s.

In 2016, Ruck was cast as the eccentric Connor Roy in HBO’s hit series, Succession, alongside an ensemble cast featuring Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, Nicholas Braun, Jeremy Strong and Matthew Macfadyen. The show has enjoyed easy success, with Ruck’s “off-center” Connor adding an odd bit of humanity to the nest of vipers that is the Roy family.

Ruck is not opposed to building off his signature role, mind you. He’s recently appeared in an ad for LiftMaster that gives a wink to the film that put him on the map nearly 35 years ago.

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The Challenge veteran Jordan Wiseley was named No. 1 all-time among male competitors on the show by Sporting News on the same day as the premiere of its most recent season, The Challenge: Total Madness. He called it “crazy” and acknowledged how cool it was, though fans of the MTV reality competition series could easily have expected his reaction to be more along the lines of “tell me something I don’t know.”

When it comes to the cast of The Challenge, Wiseley is as confident as they come, and he’d have no problem telling anyone that he believes he’s the best; with three wins under his belt and having made it to the final four times in five seasons, it’s hard to build any kind of argument against his record. And there’s a certain authenticity to his seemingly brash nature and unapologetic candor; Wiseley goes all the way in every aspect of the game and never holds back, be it in the physical challenges or when speaking his mind. At times, that could be to his detriment, which he’d likely admit without reservation; he’s even said he should take notes on the social game from fiancee Tori Deal.

Wiseley describes this latest incarnation of The Challenge as a season like no other. The cast was stacked, the accommodations were “legit prison,” the production value was higher and the game itself was “flipped on its head.” And that’s without addressing the biggest twist in the show’s history — with which, in his words, “a lot of players were now held ransom” — or his alter ego, Babushka (seriously, just keep reading).

See what else Jordan Wiseley had to say about The Challenge: Total Madness after last week’s premiere.

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He’s one of the most prolific chefs and restaurateurs in the world, a man whose very name calls to mind class and elegance in cuisine.

Jean-Georges.

Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten has been serving amazing dishes for more than four decades. In that time, he’s racked up awards, Michelin Stars and a fabled four-star review from The New York Times. And, like any good chef, he knows his place is in the kitchen.

Despite driving a culinary empire that spans the globe in 39 restaurants, Jean-Georges still spends several days a week in his classic chef whites, surrounded by flames and knives, always looking for that next signature dish.

Soon, the City of Brotherly Love will be able to enjoy the fruits of his labors, as he opens up another location of his namesake restaurant — Jean-Georges — at the Four Seasons Philadelphia, atop the Comcast Center. The project is five years in the making and promises to solidify the city’s place on the culinary map.

As his empire grows, you’ll no-doubt be seeing Jean-Georges in new places, but you won’t see him on TV any time soon. TV takes a lot of time and he’s got important work to do — in the kitchen.

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Colin Mochrie’s star athlete days may be behind him, but he might have a future in telling fortunes.

During our recent conversation, he correctly predicted that the improvisational laugh-fest that is Whose Line Is It Anyway? would get picked up for a 15th season by the CW. Maybe the time he recently spent in a floating nursing home in space, hanging out with a telepathic ape, imbued some psychic abilities. Or maybe that was just an easy call to make and he’s not the Canadian answer to Miss Cleo. Time will tell.

What we do know for sure is Colin is hilarious in everything he does, and his latest project, Liverspots and Astronots, looks to be no exception. The show, a series of animated webisodes produced by Cartuna for Facebook Watch, follows the adventures of Roosi (Mochrie’s character) and Big Man, a three-eyed psychic ape voiced by Nicole Sullivan, as they hurtle through space aboard Dusty Craters, a dilapidated space nursing home under the care of an evil goat doctor voiced by Keith David. If that sounds a little Adult Swim, it’s because Liverspots is indeed very much in the same vein as Cartoon Network’s celebrated animated programming block that’s for grown-ups but certainly not mature audiences.

This recent voice acting project is a clear sign that Colin Mochrie is no longer able to get by on his looks and boyish charm alone. Wait, no, that’s Robert Downey Jr. Colin will be just fine, making us laugh up a storm all the while.

Read the full interview.

Anderson Silva is an incredibly soft-spoken individual for a man who can render most humans completely inert — in a variety of fashions! — with ease. Of course, that should surprise no one who’s seen one of his many post-fight (post-win?) interviews, following a few rounds in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

It would be easy, but ultimately incorrect, to write that off as a result of his command of English — which is always improving and much better than my handle on his native Portuguese. It’s actually about who he is as a person, rather than the language he learned to speak in his home country of Brazil. Silva is a humble man whose concerns lie more in gratitude than in glory. After all, we’re talking about a man whose first instinct, when considering a record he’ll likely hold forever, is sadness for the one fighter who, until recently, stood a chance at beating it.

With the recent announcement — as Inquisitr reported at the time — that his October 2017 positive test for banned substances was the result of contaminated supplements, Silva was essentially vindicated of the charge of intentionally doping. The United States Anti-Doping Agency suspended him retroactively for a year, paving the way for “The Spider’s” return home to the grandest stage in professional MMA, the UFC’s trademarked Octagon. With the weight of a potentially tarnished reputation off his shoulders, Anderson Silva is ready to show the world why fight fans call him the GOAT.

He recently sat down with me to discuss his legacy — both inside and outside the cage — his Spider Kick brand and his future in the sport.