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Getting His Kicks
Porter Anderson, The Editor of CNN.com/Career, Works at CNN Center in Atlanta
Spirit Magazine, January 2001
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 Powerful pecs on a smart guy, an easy stance, he owns his own space. On Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, NBC's disturbing, addictive drama, Christopher Meloni interrogates alleged rapists and murderers with the intellectual and athletic grace of a weight-lifting Sherlock Holmes. The guy's acting yes, but a lot of what you see comes from the fact that....
CHRISTOPHER MELONI: I studied tae kwon do back in college, and I enjoyed that. But for my money, something was missing. So I got into a style called goshin jujitsu. That incorporated not only kickboxing but also grappling techniques. For me, mui Thai is the best of both. You're kicked, you kick. You punch - it's a very hard style - and then you get in and grapple and throw. SPIRIT: When you first got into this, was self-defense part of the interest? CM: No. I've always been interested in fighting as a culture. Not so much getting into fights, but whatever that thing is that's mystical, magical about it. SPIRIT: Done much real fighting on your shows? CM: In Oz we've had a couple of fights, but nothing large. I tell you where I think you can see this training is in how somebody uses his balance - where they keep themselves in relation to the perpetrator, keeping distances that are correct and comfortable, knowing when and where to go in, how you move if somebody's coming at you. SPIRIT: On Special Victims Unit, it looks authentic when you get into a perp's face. CM: The first thing you do is read your opponent. So if I lean into him in an interrogation, I would think, "Okay, I'm going to put weight on my left hand, so my right hand is available to block or counterstrike." You're trying to break him down, but the guy's unpredictable. SPIRIT: Your family's into sports, too? Or show business? CM: My dad's a doctor; my mom, a homemaker. My sister did high-school stuff, theater major; my mom sang; my dad's a good piano player. And my brother - he's the guy you ask, "Bob, what are you doing these days?" and he'll tell you, "I'm learning to prune the bonsai tree." We're all strong, upper-middle-class-ish Americans with strange interests. SPIRIT: A sense of inquiry. CM: A great phrase, and I think that's how we get our great kicks. If you take life at face value, it loses its luster pretty quickly. If you go after it, you get more out of it © Southwest Airlines
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