Diana Lee Inosanto has built a career the hard way

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Vancouver Fan Expo

When: February 17-19

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Where: Vancouver Convention Center

Tickets and information: fanexpovancouver.com

As one of the heirs of the Inosanto Martial Arts family legacy and goddaughter of legendary kung fu movie star Bruce Leeentering the Star Wars’ universe was a dream come true dating back decades for Filipino-American actress, director, stuntwoman and martial artist Diana Lee Inosanto.

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Appearing as the character Imperial Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth, iron-fisted ruler of the city of Calodan, in Episode 13: The Jedi of the hit Star Wars spin-off series, The mandalorian, Inosanto introduced one of the big bads from the spin-off series Ahsoka, created by Dave Filoni. Starring Rosario Dawson in the lead role of former Jedi rebel Ahsoka Tano, the show was developed from the character first introduced in the long-running animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

One of the last remaining Nightsisters of Dathomir, powerful sorceresses with a long feud with the Jedi Order and allied with the evil Grand Admiral Thrawn, Elsbeth of Inosanto was a key player in the story of the Ahsoka series. Inosanto, attacked by Ahsoka’s lightsaber in a fiery battle at the end, is now in high demand at Fan Expo events.

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It’s like the start of a new career for the 57-year-old Hollywood veteran, who will appear in Vancouver Fan Expo this weekend.

“As a child, I never thought that this whole martial arts circle that I was a part of would become world-known and produce great figures in the martial arts and film scene,” Inosanto said. “But after my father, Dan Inosanto, took me and a group of his students to see the first Star Wars movie, I got hooked and started training with those plastic lightsabers that were available at that time. moment. It’s pretty funny that I ended up using techniques I learned back then in my big final fight scene with Rosario.”

The path to the role in Ahsoka was not a direct one for Black Belt magazine’s 2009 Woman of the Year. Trying to get into acting proved challenging. Roles for Asian American actors were limited.

“At a very young age, I loved theater arts, but there just weren’t enough roles for people of color and I remember my aunt looking for roles and not getting them,” she said. “That didn’t stop me from pursuing my love of the performing arts, it just meant I did other things along the way. As a mother of a child with autism, she worked as a receptionist at 20th Century Fox and other odd jobs to make ends meet.”

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It was while auditioning for a role in Sylvester Stallone’s 1993 film Demolition Man that he realized he knew half the people on the stunt and fighting team as alumni of his father’s academy. She was encouraged to consider moving to a job where her martial arts experience would be an advantage. Stunt work turned out to be the right path.

Concerts on everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Resident Evil: Apocalypse to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift would follow.

In the mid-1990s, Inosanto and her husband, Ron Balicki, formed the group Mars Action training and working as stunt coordinators and fight choreographers for many film and television projects. The work was constant, but Inosanto still wanted to expand her resume.

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In 2010, he wrote, starred in and directed the independent film. the sensei. The story of a bullied gay teenager in a small town during the peak of the AIDS epidemic was one of the first wave of digitally distributed films available on Netflix and iTunes and won several awards. Inosanto became the first woman to receive the Maverick Award from the International Action Film Festival on Cinema.

Following this success, she also co-authored a children’s book with her autistic son, adult illustrator, SG Inosanto. Noble Sebastian’s curious mind, the 2020 publication was praised for its honest and funny look at the challenges and rewards of life of being a parent to an autistic child. The elder Inosanto is clearly an artist who will not stop striving to find more avenues of expression and she attributes her later professional successes to this attitude.

When the breakup with the Mandalorian came, Inosanto read the part and didn’t even know the character’s name.

“I only got the call for Mandalorian because someone had seen Sensei, and I didn’t even know my character’s name before the night it aired and Rosario named Morgan Elsbeth in the episode,” he said. “Plus, the shroud of secrecy surrounding all things Star Wars is such that cast members didn’t even know that the Jedi episode was a testing ground to see what fan reaction would be to a live-action version of Ahsoka. “I am very honored that John Favreau, Dave Filoni, Kathleen Kennedy and the rest had the faith in me to include me and I will be forever grateful that this great opportunity came when I was 50.”

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Noting that the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels were previous testing grounds for what became the next generation of live-action films in the Star Wars saga, Inosanto says that having played a role It will always be something you will cherish.

While it remains to be seen if Elsbeth makes any sort of posthumous return in Ahsoka Series 2, Inosanto’s next role is in the Paramount+ animated film titled Tiger’s Apprentice.

She is also finishing a book about herself. My father’s secret martial arts training camp for the 1977 Dallas Cowboys football team.. The team would win the 1978 Super Bowl.

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