Steven Seagal

After six years of legal sniping, actor Steven Seagal and his former business partner, Julius R. Nasso, buried the hatchet Sunday, ending a bitter court battle that had spawned allegations of contract breach and Mafia extortion. As a result of the confidential, out-of-court settlement, Nasso is expected to drop his $60-million lawsuit against Seagal, which alleged that the actor reneged on an agreement to produce four films with him.

Not long ago, Steven Seagal was one of the best-paid action stars in Hollywood. The martial arts master played crime-busting anti-heroes in films that generated more than $1 billion in ticket and DVD sales during the 1990s. Now he appears in low-budget productions that go straight to video. Seagal says he knows why: Five years ago, he was implicated in a plot to frighten two journalists out of writing unflattering stories about him and his former business partner.

A former Navy Seal who is a friend of action star Steven Seagal has lambasted the FBI for suggesting he was involved in an effort to intimidate a magazine writer working on an unflattering story about Seagal. John Rottger faulted the FBI for suggesting in an affidavit that he resembled the man who threatened Vanity Fair writer Ned Zeman with a gun in August 2002. "I don't even remotely resemble the suspect," Rottger, who has not been charged in the incident, said in an interview.

Federal officials investigating infamous Hollywood detective Anthony Pellicano have found no convincing evidence that actor Steven Seagal was involved in depositing a dead fish on a reporter's windshield in June 2002 and now believe Pellicano had some other motivation for staging the mob-style threat.

When Brown University student Ian Spector devised his Random Chuck Norris Fact Generator last year for his website, www.4Q.cc, a question arose: What would he do for an encore? Spector's epiphany: Generate "facts" about Steven Seagal. Spector hasn't posted the page yet. But he has been thinking: 1. Steven Seagal has an uncredited role in Peter Jackson's "King Kong" as the Empire State Building. 2. Steven Seagal drinks milk straight from the cow. 3.

A CD arrived recently with nothing identifying the artist or any credits information, just song titles and a note from a publicist that the name of the performer would come as a surprise. It was a male singer with a strong, understated voice, in the realm of Jack Johnson but with more energy. The songwriting was accomplished and the production credible, incorporating singer-songwriter elements, dance-hall and Indian instrumentation.

The producers of two Steven Seagal films now in postproduction -- "Today You Die" and "Mercenary" -- have sued the international action star for breach of contract, claiming he cost them millions of dollars by consistently failing to arrive on the set on time, engaging in constant script rewrites, making unapproved departures from the set and allowing his entourage to interfere with the work of the film crews.

Attorneys for actor Steven Seagal have filed a fraud and breach of contract lawsuit against the producers of two films starring the internationally known action star, claiming Seagal is owed $835,000 for starring in an independent picture called "Mercenary." The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, comes days after Nu Image, Inc.

A former business partner of Steven Seagal was sentenced to a year and a day in prison Tuesday after admitting that he plotted to have the mob extort money from the action-film star. Julius Nasso, 51, a producer of early Seagal films that grossed millions of dollars, also will pay a $75,000 fine and receive psychiatric counseling after his release from prison. He pleaded guilty in August in federal court in Brooklyn to extortion conspiracy.