Joey Ansah Biography
Joey Ansah is a British actor, director and martial artist popularly known for his roles in The Bourne Ultimatum and Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist.
Ansah’s first important role as an actor was in the UK indie film Love Struck (2005). He then had notable appearances on British TV in episodes of BBC productions Spooks (2005) and Timewatch (2006).
He then went on to play a minor role as one of the Shadow Warriors in Batman Begins (2005). However, Ansah’s most noteworthy role to date came in 2007, when he appeared in The Bourne Ultimatum as Desh Bouksani, an assassin tracking down Jason Bourne.
His performance was notable for an extended set-piece fight scene between himself and Matt Damon, regarded by one reviewer as one of the best ever filmed, in which Ansah performed all of his own stunts. In 2008, Ansah was nominated for an MTV Film Award in the “Best Fight” category. He has also acted in British independent martial arts films, such as Left for Dead and Underground.
Joey Ansah Age
He was born on November 24, 1982 in London, England. He is 36 years old as of 2018.
Joey Ansah Photo
Joey Ansah Height
Ansah stands at a height of 6 feet 1½ inches (1.87 m).
Joey Ansah Family
Ansah is of mixed ethnicity, the second son of celebrated Ghanaian fashion designer Kofi Ansah and his Devon-born wife Nicola Ansah. His uncle is film director Kwaw Ansah. Ansah lived in London for the first 10 years of his life before emigrating with his family to Ghana. At 15, Joey returned to England, settling with his mother and young sister in Plymouth.
Joey Ansah Siblings
Ansah has two siblings one sister and one brother. His sister is the visual artist Tanoa Sasraku-Ansah, and his brother is musician Ryan Ansah.
Joey Ansah Wife
Ansah likes to keep his personal life private hence there is no any news or information about whether he is dating, married or has any children.
Joey Ansah Education
Joey Ansah attended:
- Dulwich Prep London
- Devonport High School for Boys
- Oxford Brookes University
- Oakfield Preparatory School
Joey Ansah Net Worth
Joey’s net worth has not yet been publicly disclosed.
Joey Ansah Martial Art
Ansah studied the martial art of Taekwondo for four years and took up hip-hop dance and motorbike racing. While studying for his GCSEs and A-levels at Devonport High School for Boys, Ansah began training in the martial art of Ninpo Taijutsu and eventually earned a black belt in the art. This would include a period of training with Bujinkan Grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi.
Later, while studying for his degree in human biology at Oxford Brookes University, Ansah began training in the Brazilian martial art of Capoeira. He also worked as a model and extra at this time.
Joey Ansah Street Fighter: Legacy
Ansah choreographed, co-wrote and directed the short film Street Fighter: Legacy. A self-proclaimed fan of the video game series, Ansah wanted the short to be the most accurate depiction of the series, different from the two theatrically released films.
Ansah and collaborator Christian Howard, with whom he worked on SFL, worked on the live-action Street Fighter series Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, and they are developing a second season titled Street Fighter: World Warrior and Street Fighter: Resurrection.
Joey Ansah Mission Impossible
Ethan Hunt and the IMF team join forces with CIA assassin August Walker to prevent a disaster of epic proportions. Arms dealer John Lark and a group of terrorists known as the Apostles plan to use three plutonium cores for a simultaneous nuclear attack on the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca, Saudi Arabia. When the weapons go missing, Ethan and his crew find themselves in a desperate race against time to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.
Release date: July 27, 2018 (USA)
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Based on: Mission: Impossible; by Bruce Geller
Box office: 791.1 million USD
Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, MORE
Joey Ansah Movies
- Street Fighter: Resurrection (2016)
- Street Fighter: World Warrior (TBA)
- Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist (2014) – Akuma, also co-creator
- Green Street 3: Never Back Down (2013) – Victor
- The Numbers Station (2013) – Derne
- UFO (2013) – Police Officer / Black Ops Soldier
- Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) – Aldan
- Attack the Block (2011) – Policeman 1
- Knock Out (2010)
- Street Fighter: Legacy (2010) – Akuma, also co-writer and co-director[3]
- Hit Girls (2009) – James
- Ghost Town (2009) (TV) – Bonesera
- Underground (2007) – Joey, The Model
- The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) – Desh Bouksani
- Voyage: Killing Brigitte Nielsen (2007) (TV)
- Love Struck (2005) – Mango
- Batman Begins (2005) as League of Shadows member
- Left for Dead (2004) – Kickboxer 1
Joey Ansah Interview
Interviewer: How did this project first get started?
Joey Ansah: It all started with Street Fighter: Legacy. The short, I guess proof of concept, YouTube sensation that came out about four years ago. The original plan was the treatment for a World Warrior series. It was originally written by myself and Christian Howard. I pitched that to Capcom five years ago, hoping they would finance it. But that wasn’t the case so I ended up kind of counter-pitching something much smaller that would still showcase my vision of live action, which Capcom financed. That did very well on YouTube.
On the back of that, now that I had proven myself and the rest of the team, I said, “Let’s do what we started out to do, a feature-length proper series.” This time I thought let’s shelf the World Warrior script for now. I’d rather do that with much more money. Let’s do Assassins Fist, go backwards from when Legacy is set and really get into the origins of Ryu, Ken, Goki, and Goken. That’s much more of a classical story, in terms of classical story elements—father versus son, bother versus brother, love triangle, tragedy, a master trying to pass on tradition but still protect the new generation from the tragedy of the previous. There’s so much great storytelling fundamentals in there. I thought this is the place to start, hopefully, a new Street Fighter live-action franchise. It’s not just something the hardcore fans will love but hopefully the wider audience will love because at the heart of it and I hope you’d agree with me from the five episodes you’ve seen, it’s a character story.
Interviewer: Street Fighter: Legacy was well received. Did you think the Kickstarter would be so well received?
Joey Ansah: Well the irony was that the Kickstarter was not successful and we shut it down. Out of desperation, and you have to understand when we were raising that finance, we were kind of coming out of the recession of 2012. As a first time feature writer, first time director, you would think that with a brand as big as Street Fighter, it would be easy to raise a couple million dollars, but it really wasn’t, so at one point, we were like “if we don’t close this finance soon, our option with Capcom, which we had purchased, is going to run out and we’re either going to lose the rights or gonna have to renew the option and have to repurchase it.” Out of desperation, at one point, we were like let’s see if the fans out there will support this. The Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign was so wildly successful. I thought if they could raise two million bucks in a month, then maybe we could with all the Street Fighter fans. But for whatever reason, it just wasn’t there, so luckily, we were still behind the scenes working and getting private equity investment because the finances were half through cashflow presales and the rest through private equity, so we got an investor and it allowed us to cancel the Kickstarter altogether and just do it the conventional, legitimate way.
Interviewer: What’s been the biggest challenge in adapting the Street Fighter characters?
Joey Ansah: The biggest challenge was making the series on such a small budget. Realistically, we had about $2 million cash. You generate more through everyone deferring. No one really got paid. A lot of people deferred anywhere up to 90% of what they should be paid because we wanted what little money we had to go on the screen. Despite it only costing a couple million, it looks like ten times that amount. It went into the production value, the locations, the sets that we all built from scratch, the music, the sound design, the visual effects, the grading, etc. That was a real challenge, working on this project, almost full time, for about 5 years, and essentially not getting paid. That’s all because I would rather be broke and make sure this project be the best it can possibly be than have a bit more wedge in my pocket and it be 10% less good and that was the real challenge and I think everyone, all the core team, have really sacrificed. We’ve all essentially done it for nothing. It will be worth it. The end product is something we’re all very very proud of and most people will scoff when they hear how much it was really made for.
Interviewer: Was the entire story edited as one movie and then later broken into the separate episodes?
Joey Ansah: It’s interesting. Good question. This is a multi-format series. It was originally written as commercial half hours, a 6-part tv series and it will go out on tv, later in the year, in that format. But with the excitement of Machinima being the first platform who will really target… we always wanted “let’s market this to the hardcore fans first and then do subsequent platforms to tackle the wider audience.” It’s one piece of content that works as a 12 part web series, a 6 part tv series, a 105 minute 2 bit tv movie, and as a full theatrical cut on the DVD and Blu-Ray, which is almost a 2 1/2 hour movie. That’s never been done before, one piece of content that fits and works on all of those platforms.
Interviewer: You’ll be playing Akuma, right? How much of a role will you have?
Joey Ansah: It’s big. He’s kinda the villain or anti-hero of that world, depending how you see it. There is a fantastic actor, Gaku Space, who plays the younger Goki, who is essentially the younger version of my character, Akuma. You’ll see a transition, throughout the series, of him becoming me. The Akuma role is significant but I don’t want to give away too much or spoil it for those who haven’t seen it. It’s one of the most difficult characters to pull off because he’s the most fantastical and extreme looking. We’ve seen Ryu. We’ve seen Ken. How in the hell are the going to pull off Akuma, with the red hair, and the beads, and the face? I hope I’ve done a good job. The poster that came out last week has gone down a storm so far, so it seems people are liking what they’re seeing so far.
Interviewer: Which is your favorite version of the game?
Joey Ansah: In terms of just a pure Street Fighter game, Alpha 2 was what I played the most. But Marvel vs Capcom 2 was oxygen for me. Me and Christian Howard, who plays Ken and is my co-writer on this, we lived together for many years and we would play, easily, for four hours a day, everyday of Marvel vs Capcom 2 and a lot of series was devised while playing this game.
Interviewer: The first episode debuts on May 23. How often will they be released?
Joey Ansah: Machinima opted for everything released in one go. Much how Netflix pioneered that with House of Cards, they released everything in one go. It gives viewers the choice. You can pace it out for yourself or you can binge watch it. Now because it is essentially a movie, a good way to think about it is a chapterized movie. Mortal Kombat: Legacy, for example, was almost a series of vignettes, a series of short, unconnected stories, whereas Assassins Fist is one, long, epic, cinematic saga. It will be very satisfying to watch it back-to-back. On the 23rd, Machinima will release a playlist link, so when you watch episode one or episode zero, there’s a prologue, it will keep rolling on to the next episode until you reach the end or until you get tired and take pause.
Interviewer: And word is there are plans for another Street Fighter story?
Joey Ansah: Oh definitely, the irony is that we actually wrote that story prior to this and it’s just been on the shelf waiting. The intention is to follow this up. If this is as big as a success as I hope, yeah. This is only the beginning. It’s the start of a franchise. I would like to do another series, even given the choice of doing a movie. I need to do another series to set the foundations, narratively, of what the movie will be.
Interviewer: I think you said Chun-Li would be next?
Joey Ansah: Well, it would be the world warrior story line, so that would encompass the Street Fighter 1 tournament, it would encompass Ryu becoming the tireless wanderer. We would introduce Shadowloo, Bison’s cartel, and Vega, Balrog, Sagat. We would introduce Guile, Chun-Li, and the rest of the world warrior fighters and it would all culminate in the actual tournament itself. But in the same way that I’ve really developed the characterization of Ryu and Ken, all of those major characters in the world warrior story, would also get a good degree of development, particularly Guile and Chun-Li.
Interviewer: Thank you for your time and were interested to see how this ends.
Source: comicvine.gamespot.com