I knew that one day I’d write a column about Darren Shahlavi. Never in a million years would I have ever expected it to be in the wake of his death.
Darren was the first “reel person” I ever got to know. We met in 2002, when my boyfriend (now husband) Paul, fresh out of film school, was working at Rogers Video.
At the time, Darren, then 29, was already a veteran of Hong Kong action films, where he’d made a name for himself as a versatile stunt artist and actor who could spar with the best of ’em.
His early titles included Tai Chi II (directed by famed martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo Ping, who’d later choreograph the iconic fight sequences in The Matrix films), Sixty Million Dollar Man, and The Turbulent Affair.
Darren had just wrapped his first big mainstream role as Cedric Mills, the Hungarian boxer who lets loose on Eddie Murphy in I, Spy.
At Rogers, Darren was always renting direct-to-video action movies and rare martial arts flicks. Paul and Darren bonded over the genre titles and their mutual ex-pat status (they’re both Brits). A friendship – then a bro-hood – formed between them, and soon, between Darren and I, too.
When Paul proposed to me via an elaborate scavenger hunt that took us to various locations around Vancouver, it was Darren who helped out with the ruse, hiding in the bushes with roses and champagne until the appropriate moment. He stood with us at our wedding; he spent Christmas with us when he couldn’t get back to England; later, when Paul started directing video game trailers and in-game cinematics, he helped out with stunt choreography and motion-capture.
This column wouldn’t exist without Darren Shahlavi, because it was in observing Darren in action that I came to understand the passion, hard work, mindset, and sacrifice required to make it in showbiz.
I saw how people who work in this industry do so because of an abiding passion, often borne in their childhoods; for Darren, it was from the Bruce Lee movies he watched growing up in Manchester.
I saw that you had to go where the work took you – to China, to Germany, to Montreal, to Toronto, to LA – even though you desperately missed your family, your friends, and the comfort of your own bed.
I saw that red carpets and filming were only a fraction of the working actor’s life. The bulk of that life is rather unglamorous: auditions, training, making connections, waiting for phone calls, and doing your best to stay positive.
I saw how much joy could be derived from the craft. You can see it in Darren’s fights in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Arrow, or when he acted with Robin Williams and Sir Ben Kingsley, or when he played Kano in Mortal Kombat: Legacy.
That glint in his eye? That’s glee.
In 2009, Paul and I sat with Darren in a restaurant in YVR. We were on our way to Japan; he was on his way to China to film Ip Man 2. He was in the best shape of his life, so focused, and stoked to work with Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung.
It was to become one of his most defining roles, and elevate him to international action star status. He loved every second of it.
2014 had been an exceptionally good year for Darren. He’d recently wrapped on Pound of Flesh, in which he played the villain opposite one of his idols: Jean-Claude Van Damme.
It’s a great irony that Darren, one of the gentlest souls I’ve ever encountered (just ask my four-year-old about Uncle Big D), would be typecast as a leading villain throughout his career.
I knew that, one day, I’d be writing about Darren in this column. But I always expected that it was going to be about his breakthrough to A-list status, and he was going to share his secrets for keeping your reel dreams alive, even when it’s difficult to do so.
On Jan. 14, Darren passed away in his sleep from the prescription painkillers he was using to treat an injury that he had incurred on set. He was 42 years old.
There are countless headlines swirling in the wake of Darren’s death, many of them lurid and patently untrue.
But the headlines won’t mar the love and respect I have for Darren, or the lesson I’ve taken from our 13 years of friendship: that to succeed – as a “Reel Person”, as a human being – you’ve got to hold tight to your childhood dreams, never settle for anything less than doing what you love, and relish every second of your journey.
RIP, Big D.
• The Shahlavi family has set up a fund to build a permanent memorial to Darren in LA. To learn more, visit GiveItForward.com.
