Andrew Lawrence

The 43-year-old lingers there, swaying in the stillness, his sculpted five-foot-nine-inch, 209-pound frame shrouded under charcoal sweats and a black hoodie. He tells me an animated story from his days playing semipro football, before he joined the Army 19 years ago. When he makes it to the punchlinehow he discovered his franchise was going out of business when he was evicted from corporate housing because the teams founder was caught embezzlinghis deep belly laugh pierces the quiet. After that, I was like, I really need to get my life together, Owens says. Finally, an attendant opens the door.

Major Owens stands at attention as the flag is raised at 6:30 a.m. at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Once inside this all-but-deserted gym, Owens springs into action. He goes around the room snatching up dumbbells and weight plates and scatters them across the green track that loops around all the gyms workout equipment like a moat. As he reconfigures the space to his liking, more people trickle in, until there are about 20 in all. They vary in age, race, gender, body shape, and walk of life: Jayson Leach, Ed.D., a 41-year-old school principal who has lost 300 pounds over nine years training with Owens; Tanisha Melvin, a 39-year-old mom of three whos seen her overall strength and endurance increase under Owenss tutelage; Dennis Shurin, a 71-year-old retired shift manager and former military, who wears braces on both legs to manage arthritis but who still walks for an hour on the treadmill every day before this Morning Crew workout.

None of these normos look like they belong in a gym with Owens. Now that all the lights are up and his hoodie is off, he resembles a real-life G.I. Joe. Still, every weekday, the Morning Crew shows up here at this ungodly hour for a sample of his Army-inspired functional fitness. When it comes to strength, its really about building the person from the inside to master the outside, Owens says. Most things that come physically start mentally. We come together to support one another.

Over the next 50 minutes, Owens pushes these nice people through a nasty strength-and-stamina-blasting circuit. Today is a light dayFri-Yaybut you wouldnt know it from the curses and sweat flying. Only Owens looks relaxed. He gently encourages some people and finishes sets with others, cajoling a little extra effort out of each person. Its humbling, he says. You see the potential in people that they dont see in themselves.

And before you presume that Owenss highly personalized approach must come with an appropriately high hourly rate, know: These sessions are free. In fact, this strength experiment started eight years ago with Owens trying to squeeze in a workout ahead of a full day of grad-level public-health classes at East Carolina University and work at Fort Bragg, where he is a paratrooper in the Armys 82nd Airborne Division. A day at the base could involve anything from training recruits to overseeing security to shooting at the range. His workouts were a slack-jawed spectacle for TruFits early-bird crowd, until one guy sidled up and worked up the courage to ask, Hey, brother, are you training for something? When Owens said he wasnt, the man asked if he could join in. And he stuck with it. Soon one became four, became 20became this bunch now huffing and puffing behind Owens.

&quot;strength is really about building the person from the inside to master the outside&quot;

Its only recently that the Morning Crew learned a surprising truth about Owensthat this apparent paragon of vitality is in the third of five stages of chronic kidney disease, with his kidney function having crashed to 50 percent and his long-term health at risk. And its not as if he told them. (Thats not his style.) They learned it from news websites and social media, which reported that Major Carpaccio Owens (their Pace!) had achieved the all-but-impossible, even for the strongest and toughest soldiers in the strongest and toughest military force: Hed earned a perfect score on the Armys new fitness test.

OWEN'S PROBLEMS STARTED in 2007 when he was given a series of rabies vaccinations ahead of his second deployment to Iraq. He noticed that his face was puffy and he began feeling tired all the time. One morning in the shower after deploying, he saw that his legs had swelled up. He was transported by ambulance to Kuwait. He arrived in kidney failure and with 26 pounds of extra water weight creeping perilously close to his lungs. Following an intense round of diuretics, he was airlifted to Germany and then home.

After several weeks, Owens had recovered enough to compete in an Army-sponsored combat tournament. But then his vitals spiked again. He was referred to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and diagnosed with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a scarring of the kidneys that causes chronic kidney disease, which is progressive and incurable. He was denied additional term life insurance based on this preexisting condition. It was devastating for the divorced and remarried father of two.

As an athlete, if I pulled my hamstring or broke a bone, its like, okay, the body heals itself, he says. It took Owens three days to process his health downturn. To finally understand that your bodys not going to heal and this is your new normal was crushing. It was like my identity was taken from me.

Major Owens doing the abdominal leg tuck, one of moves in the test. He can do 22 in 2 minutes.

An Air Force brat and lifelong gym rat who started strength training at age 12, Owens says he has always been defined by his physical presence. After the diagnosis, he felt something that hed never felt jumping out of airplanes: vulnerable. When breaking the news to his young daughters, he simply said that Daddys kidneys were sick. In general, Owens doesnt dwell on mortality. Theres no space for that in his line of work. You just come to the realization that you might die here or on a foreign land, he says. So why harp on it? Id rather be the person increasing morale than decreasing it.

Instead of yielding, Owens dug in. I cant be a hypocrite telling others to push through and give up, he says. You start going down this hole, but then you gotta shake that off and say, Youre thinking about something you cant control. What can you control now?

Major Owens doing a standing power throw with a med ball. He can launch it more than 13 meters.

What he could control was his diet and his workouts. When protein stopped showing up in his urine, a telltale sign of kidney malfunction, Owens started on a keto diet, thinking that eating fat and protein in greater quantities could make his kidneys more efficient at processing them. As a result of the diet, Owens was able to reduce a drug-treatment cocktail of ACE inhibitors, diuretics, and anti-inflammatories to one combo pill. He credits his superior conditioningthe result of consistent trainingwith helping to decrease the inflammation, bloating, and fatigue of kidney disease. Although his condition was stable, it was something hed have to worry about his whole life. But rather than slow him down, the diagnosis just steeled his discipline

Owens, who wears red dog tags to alert medical personnel to his condition, was soon back to his frenetic schedule. He earned a personal-trainer certification, and when he wasnt whipping the Morning Crew and the 82nds soldiers into shape, he was training on his own not merely to pass the existing Army fitness test, but to crush the harder test in the works. Anything less, he felt, simply wasnt gonna fly.

FOR ALMOST FOUR DECADES , the fitness test for soldiers was simple: Complete as many situps and pushups as possible in two minutes (with a brief rest in between), followed by a two-mile sprint. The point was to measure muscular endurance and cardio fitness in a way that could be replicated easily anywhere. But in the past decade, the Army brain trust realized that the test wasnt a true gauge of functional fitness and combat readiness. The Armylike Americais facing a fitness crisis. More soldiers are overweight, and at least half of all soldiers suffer an injury annually.

Major Owens trains The Morning Crew at TruFit Gym in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

The U.S. Army Center for Initial Military Training has been developing a new test since 2013, consulting hundreds of military and civilian exercise experts. In October 2018, the center started a pilot run, which is scheduled to end this October, when the test becomes official and every base will have the necessary equipment to run it. The new test represents a cultural shift, says Colonel Kevin Bigelman, the centers director of holistic health and fitness. Its goal is not only to improve combat performance, but also to reduce preventable injuries and their associated troop attrition and to enhance mental toughness and stamina. It includes six events to be completed in 90 minutes: deadlifts, standing power throws, pushups, a shuttle run, leg tucks, and a two-mile run.

Major Owens working out at TruFit in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

The idea is to replicate the tasks a fighter might face on a battlefield. The top score is 600, and theres no curve for gender or age. High-intensity training requires a dedicated program and cyclical attention to progression and recovery throughout the year, says Whitfield East, Ph.D., the centers research physiologist. Active-duty soldiers must take the test twice a year, and their scores inform their training schedule.

After training for a monthfocusing on the leg tuck, a fierce ab burnerOwens took his first crack at the new test late last summer (right after his leg-day workout, incidentally) and wound up scoring a 585.

He had another go at the test on November 6, 2019. Everything just kinda lined up for me that day, he says. He was fully rested and blasted through the first five challenges, scoring off the scale on most of them. At that point, I knew I was on a perfect score, he says. I needed a roughly six-minute pace for two miles. I focused on my stride and relaxed. He finished in 12:40, becoming one of the first people to notch a perfect 600. Literally a week before, I was denied additional life insurance, says Owens, who felt as if he were taking the test for anyone who, at one point or another in their life, had felt less-than. I felt validation, accomplishment.

Major Owens doing plate pushes at TruFit in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Major  Owens doing plate pushes at TruFit in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Owens is not resting on his laurels. This March, he enrolled in Ranger School. His health is still stable, but hes aware of what looms in his future long-term and has heard from his doctors about stents and vein splicing and dialysis. But he doesnt want to get ahead of himself. Right now, he says, Im just living for today.

Thats a maxim the Morning Crew often hears from Owens. Earning that perfect test score, despite his diagnosis, has been an extra source of strength for them as well. For Jeffrey Blue, a 48-year-old FedEx worker who has lowered his blood pressure and cholesterol, Owens shows that you can do more than just take your meds, that [I can] maintain my health as a whole. For Deidre Furlong, a 41-year-old teacher, Owens provides accountability: Theres no way I would be consistent by myself. For others, like Leach, the camaraderie of this group provides a unique energy. Somebody might be stronger or weaker than you, he says, but the energy is what pushes you. It goes the other way, too. The Morning Crew has helped make me a better person, Owens says. They lift my spirit and give me strength.

At the end of the final workout each week, Owens awards the Morning Crew various accolades to stoke their motivation. This Friday morning, Melvin wins a heart-shaped glass bauble, the prize for showing the most heart. One coveted trophy, a replica WWE championship belt, goes to Furlong for getting shit done. She will keep it for a week until the next winner is announced. Its a reminder that you dont have to nail a perfect score on a fitness test to prove your strength.

Major Carpaccio Owens doing a deadlift with the hex bar, part of the Army

IT'S NOT YET 4:00 a.m. in Fayetteville, North Carolina, when Major Carpaccio Owens eases his tangerine Toyota Corolla into an empty strip-mall parking lot. With a small duffel slung over his shoulder and a ten-pound medicine ball under his arm, OwensPace for shortstrides through the gloom to the locked door of a TruFit gym.

How Major Carpaccio Owens Became the Army's Strongest Man at 43

Yet this box produced 19-year-old C.J. Cummings, Americas best hope of snapping a 36-year Olympic-weightlifting-medal drought at the 2020 Games. At the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials, Cummings fell just short of earning a spot in the Rio Games as a 15-year-old. He has already won six world championships (four junior and two youth) and has the second-highest number of Olympic qualifying points among lifters in his weight class. Over the past two months, says Cummings, whos also taking classes in business at a local college, Ive broken 30 records alone.

The five-five, 160-pound strongman was recently called the LeBron James of weightlifting ( <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lebron-james-of-weightlifting-1440371008" id="2f596315-bc5c-37d4-a7f3-48683f62680b"> The Wall Street Journal </a> ), and that endears him to the CF Beaufort veterans old enough to remember when a diapered C. J. would run around mimicking his older sister, Crystalthe first Cummings-family protegee of lifting coach Ray Jones. His roster of standouts also includes 17-year-old Dade Stanley, a two-time American youth champion, and Mahassen Hala Fattouh, Lebanons first-ever female weightlifter. Within six months of taking up the sport at ten years old, C. J. became a YouTube sensation after completing a clean and jerk of double his bodyweight (198 pounds), the youngest American male lifter to do so.

Cummings has worked with Jones since then, and his approach is based on listening to his body. Broadly speaking, his program consists of periodized progression, lifting closer and closer to his one-rep maxes as he builds up to a competition. Each days workload is entirely dependent on what Jones sees and feels. Some training days are dedicated to lifting, whereas others focus on active recovery, with an emphasis on stability, mobility, and core work. A few years ago, high-level athletes were going day after day after day because they were on performance-enhancing drugs, Jones says, referring to doping scandals that have bedeviled the sport for the past six decades. But now, in this new age, less is more.

Cummings hopes his Tokyo medal quest inspires a wider fitness movement back home. I want parents to bring their kids here to sign up for weightlifting. I want to help save the sport and keep it poppin year-round.

Near the very bottom of South Carolina, in the salt-marsh-soaked town of Beaufort, across the verdant main drag from a national cemetery that serves as the final resting place of some 2,800 Union fighters, sits a single-story brick building that abuts a cluster of corrugated-metal garages. Inside, weight plates, racks, and boxes compete for space along the scuff-marked cinderblock walls while oversized fans keep the sticky air circulating. As shrines to fitness go, CrossFit Beaufort is about ...

South Carolina's Weightlifting Prodigy Is Ready for the Next Step

Brown is in Telluride, but when I meet him, hes not doing all the networking and selfie taking and For Your Considerationing that Oscar hopefuls usually do at these things. Hes at a downtown condo complex, inside a small gym with a disturbingly low ceiling. The sweat-glazed, six-foot, 190-pound Brown is already a few miles into a vigorous run on a treadmill set against a mirrored wall. He looks more like a slot receiver than an actor, and he invites me to take the open treadmill next to his, with a mischievous but welcoming look. He promises not to have us breathing too hard in this thin air.

Before long, hes on the floor and Im laboring to maintain my balance through sets of bicycle kicks and Russian twists. (Try to focus on form, not reps, he says.) Then trembling through sets of chinups. (Pace yourself now.) Then trembling even more through sets of dumbbell lifts before I finally tap out with a bum left shoulder. (You know, swimming would really help that....)

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All the while, with metronomic consistency, Brown hisses and growls and roars straight past the soft targets he sets for me. You could waltz to the sound of his head butting against the ceiling during his chinup reps. By the end of our hour-long workout, I am fried. Really? Brown asks with a deep belly laugh. Im sorry! I saw you working really hard. When I ask how the workout was for him, he says, There was no pain for me. But listen, I have friends that I will enlist to work out with me, and theyll be like, Yo, Brown, you need to calm down. You know youre 43 now. And Im like, Yeah, age aint nothin but a number.

How Sterling K. Brown Plans to Live to 100

IT'S POSSIBLE THAT this is the most that any journalist has written about Brown in a profile without once mentioning This Is Us. (Four hundred and eleven words, for the record.) It is the show that made him famous and rich and prime Internet-boyfriend material, and he came to it after busting his ass in relative obscurity for two decades in the New York theater scene and cobbling together medium-sized roles on TV dramas like Third Watch and Supernatural. Then, around the time he turned 40, everything clicked. First he emerged as the breakout star of FXs The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016) for his portrayal of prosecutor Christopher Darden. That same year, he booked a lead role on the NBC drama This Is Us. He earned an Emmy for his performance in 2017, which marked the fourth time in the awards shows 69-year history that an African-American had won outstanding lead actor in a drama series.

Whats more, Brown didnt win for playing a slave or a drug dealer or a magical Negro (think Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile) or the other kinds of roles for which black men are typically nominated. He won for his portrayal of Randall Pearson, the smoothie-drinking, daughter-raising, weather-futures-trading ballast of the otherwise all-white Pearson family. (Browns character is adopted.) With profound and often teary sincerity, Brown plays Randall as strong and smart and sensitivea breakthrough for black male characters onscreen, a breakthrough owing in part to the vision of creator-showrunner Dan Fogelman (who is white) and his willingness to collaborate with Brown to hone the character. I share things from my past that directly impact the way in which young Randall is written, Brown says. That includes not getting a chance to say goodbye to his father, who died when Brown was tena moment of closure that came in the shows pivotal Memphis episode in season 1.

Range comes naturally to Brown, whos as comfortable posing in nothing but a bath towel on social media to promote the 2018 dystopian action thriller Hotel Artemis (note: his wife, the actor Ryan Michelle Bathe, filmed that video) or taking his shirt off on The Ellen DeGeneres Show as he is delivering the 2018 commencement speech at Stanford: a funny, emotional, and playful 30-minute call for students to let their light shine by embracing their passions for the broader good. (Incidentally, as we part company in Telluride, Brown is stopped by an older nerdy white guyglasses, cashmere sweater, probably watches This Is Uswho was in the audience that day for his daughters graduation, and he thanks Brown for the wise words. Its Bill Gates.)

If you look at the past three years of Browns life, and you spend a day with him and watch as he pounds pullups or BS-es with Bill Gates, you get the distinct impression of a man who has it figured out: stature, talent, a strong black family with two healthy boys (Andrew, eight, and Amar, four), and a booming career that he attributes to divine conspiracy. Not only does that career show no signs of slowing downhe's voicing Lieutenant Matthias in Frozen 2, out Nov. 22but it also seems as if Brown could do just about anything at this point and still come out on top.

And a black man like mewhos pushing 40, who works out less and less, who mostly grinds in obscurity in hopes of his own breakthrough, who wonders if theres still time to become his best self for his newborn son, and who watched Brown on Lifetimes Army Wives (on which he played the male spouse in the friend group)cant help but be inspired. When I tell Brown of the long journey I made to this mountaintop just to receive wisdom from him, he laughs sheep-ishly and says, Come on, bruh. But he gets to talking about how hes expanding my definition of self and about how life is not about putting yourself in any kind of box. Then he hits me with this, the real goal a young black man should have in his life: to live to 100.

A THREE-YEAR VARSITY letterman in football who also played basketball and ran track at St. Louis Country Day School, Brown entered his first triathlon in South Carolina about eight years ago, when he was a hardworking actor looking to push himself. It was short distance, he recalls. A third of a mile in the pool, 14 miles on the bike, and then a 5K run. There he was approached by an 80-something entrant. He was like, How ya doin, young fella? This your first time out? Have a great time today. The triathlon took about an hour and a half. And when Brown beat the man by only 15 minutes, he came away more impressed with the old guys performance than with his own. Once you see that as a possibility, you know that its something that you can attain for yourself.

Growing up in St. Louis, Brown didnt have many examples of vibrant elderlies in his life. He doesnt know of a man in his immediate family who has lived past 65. His father died of a diabetes-induced heart attack at 45. I just cried. I just cried. I miss him. Pops wouldve loved this stuff, says Brown with a wistful look, referring to both all the sports he played in high school and his acting success. He tells me how he used to go by his middle name, Kelby, until his mid-teens, and how part of his grieving process involved embracing his full name. Sterling always felt like an old mans name because it was my old mans name, he says. But now its my name.

To hear his son tell it, the elder Sterling Brown Jr. was the quintessential cool dad. He cooked French toast for breakfast and sweet potatoes on Thanksgivinghis boys favorites, of course. He rode around in a pink 1972 Cadillac Eldorado blasting Michael McDonald on the eight-track. Most days, he was more best friend than father. We would do dumb shit like fart in each others faces in bed, just try to catch each other off guard, Brown says. When his mother wasnt around, theyd binge-watch movies, including R-rated classics like The Terminator and Prizzis Honor. His father was a sucker for sappy moments. Crying has never been a thing for me, like as a way to not be masculine, Brown says. Because my dad would watch a movie and it was just boo-fuckin-hoo all the way through the whole thing. We would both be crying together, whether it was an animated movie or whatever. That was never forbidden or taboo. I was allowed to feel, because he felt.

I think when Pops passed, I had sort of a recognition of the fact that 45 was young, Brown continues. Mortality is something hes acutely aware of. In his early 30s, he read Healthy at 100, a book by the ice cream scionturnednutritionist John Robbins that examined the habits of the worlds centenarians. Brown knows well the odds against him hitting 80, much less triple digits. Black men are in worse health than almost any other demographic in the United States. Theyre more likely to be obese. They experience disproportionately higher mortality rates for many of the leading causes of death, not least cardiovascular disease and prostate cancer.

Making it to 100, for Brown, means sticking to a plan built around a daily exercise regimen heavy on calisthenics and hoops, a diet rich in grains and greens, and at least 20 minutes of meditation a day. He celebrates his birthday with a ten-mile run. I just dont want to give in to the statistical analysis that says that is my fate, he says. So I try to do things as proactively as possible to ensure that Im around to see my childrens children and be of value to them when they come into the world. Theres so much to live for, and I dont want to sell myself short by thinking I dont have a right to longevity and vitality any more or less than anyone else.

It doesnt help that men in general tend to take a laissez-faire approach to their health. Men want to suffer through stuff, he says. It serves us in certain circumstances, and in others we leave well enough alone for too long. I mean, if were looking at something as simple as prostate cancer and being able to check oneself, and the sort of fear or discomfort that the community at large may experience due to good old-fashioned homophobiatheres foolishness that keeps us from living our best lives.

But Brown believes some of the cultural barriers can be overcome with a bit of positive reinforcement. So many young black men are into sports, he says. And then for whatever reason [as adults] they see sports as no longer being a part of their life. So when the sport is removed, the tenets for living a physically fit life arent necessarily in place. More of us have to learn how to carry the tenets that we learned that made us want to be competitive in that sport to just be competitive in life and maintain fitness. There are benefits beyond the game.

As a teenager, Brown was recruited to play football at Claremont McKenna College but instead went to Stanford and majored in economics his first two years. In the summer, he interned at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. I was always good with numbers, he says. I was the AP Econ guy. I thought making money was it. He had acted in high school and relished his time onstage, but the idea of making it a career was laughable. I thought it was something that only people who didnt have to make a contribution to their families were allowed to do. I gotta help.

Then a Stanford professor visited his dorm in search of students to audition for a school production of the August Wilson play Joe Turners Come and Gone. Brown went for it, landed the lead role, and immediately knew he had found his lifes passion. Even though I was spending another two or three hours a night memorizing lines, my grades got better, he recalls. You know how the work is work but it doesnt feel arduous? Thats something you have to pay attention to.

AFTER STANFORD, Brown went to grad school for drama at NYUwhere, apparently, being the strong man on campus had less value. My teachers told me to stop lifting weights, he says. I was like, What are you talking about? And they were like, Its gonna be hard for things to pass through you with all this musculature. So for emotion, for feelings to flow through, you have to be a vessel, a sieve, rather than something that is heavily armored. He stopped lifting. Started doing yoga. Shifted the focus of his workouts from brute strength to cardio. He would say things like, Theres no need for me to be swole and outta control. In his early theater days, he was encouraged by the many different examples of black male humanity he saw. Theres a wider breadth of who you can be onstage than was allowed on the camera, he says. Denzel Washington, Sam Jackson, Delroy Lindo, Don Cheadleall these dudes come from theater, and they werent jacked-up, crazy-looking dudes.

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Brown started going out for parts with more confidence, competing against the likes of Mahershala Ali, Mike Colter, and Anthony Mackie. I remember auditioning for The Wire and being very close to Stringer Bell [which ultimately went to Idris Elba]. Whats been really cool for me in terms of the usual suspects is that it has been a situation of all love. We were like, Somebodys gonna get the gig. I hope its you. He considered himself lucky to work regularly enough to cover the bills in his 20s. At any point 90 percent of all the acting-union members are unemployed, and youre just fighting to be part of the rotating 2 percent, says Brown. Theres so much rejection that you have to be willing to deal with and let it sort of roll off your back. There are people I know who are absolutely brilliant who had to segue into something else in life.

Of course, being married to a fellow actor can lead to jealousy. Brown met his wife at Stanford and makes the extra effort to talk through any feelings of envy with Bathe. Ryan celebrates my success, Brown says. But sometimes its like, Damn, bro, whens it my turn? It doesnt hurt that their boys could give a flying Fig Newton (Browns words) about their acting careers.

In Trey Edward Shultss Waves (out this month), Brown plays Ronald, the hard-ass patriarch of an upper-middle-class black family whos in perennial competition with his son, a standout high school wrestler. While his character is 180 degrees from the adorkable Randall Pearson, the vulnerability for which the actor has become known shines right on through. With Waves, Brown got to try something different, something newwhich is more of a chance than he ever thought hed get in this business. For such a long time, youre waiting and hoping for these crumbs from the table of joy, he says. Then all of a sudden people are like, What do you wanna do? What are you interested in? We wanna work with you!

Reflecting on this, Brown riffs on the point of acting, why it is that hes so passionate about what he does. I want to hopefully give you some sense of inspiration, either to make the world a better place or for you to be a better person, he says. And so when I step into a theater, when I step on set, it is my sanctuary. Its me and its not me. Im a vessel for a story to be told, for a perspective to be illuminated.

CUT TO TWO DAYS later. Im back in the South Carolina Lowcountry, and the outlook on the home front is grim. My back is tight. My shoulders may as well be closed for repairs. Most days, I flit around the house like a hummingbird. Now Im pinned to the couch like a feather in a nest. I cant afford to lie here. Theres a hurricane coming, an evacuation order to heed. My family is depending on me, but leaving the mountaintop has been a helluva comedown, and I fear my vessel may be busted beyond repair. I wonder, What would Sterling K. Brown do?

Weirdly, my mind tracks back to a story he shared about launching his production companyIndian Meadows, named for his old St. Louis stomping grounds. [American Crime Story executive producer] Ryan Murphy was the first person I know of to say in order to have ownership over your career, you kinda have to tell your own stories, says Brown, who is focusing on film and TV projects that have what he calls intelligent diversity. Im looking at people of color in the forefront. They can be best friends, too, but they gotta be in the forefront of the show. (First up, hell costar with Kerry Washington in a thriller called Shadow Force.) Granted, on the surface this would appear to be an obvious career move for an actor on a hot streak. But Brown, as a former econ major whos plugged into one of the most well-heeled alumni networks on the planet, would seem uniquely positioned to win, no? I think you probably give me credit I dont deserve, he says. Anytime you step into the unknown, theres a degree of fear. But I do know that when the desire supersedes the fear, the momentum carries you forward.

That last line lingers in my head awhileuntil, suddenly, my arms are swinging my limp body off the couch. My feet are shuffling out from under tender hips as I drag outdoor planter boxes out of harms way and lift shutters onto windows. I take many breaks from the butter-thick humidity; at the end of the day, I pull through. Desire had superseded fear, with nothing left to feel but pride.

And yet it isnt until later, when Im bouncing my baby boy in my adrenaline- charged arms from the safety of an Atlanta hotel room, that I fully appreciate what Brown means about the great potential an active lifestyle has to add zeros to a life. Its easier to maintain a level of fitness than it is to lose it and try to get it back, he says. You want to do enough that you feel like youve done something, but not so much that you dont wanna do it again tomorrow. So its not about trying to kill yourself. Its about trying to give yourself the inspiration to continue. No doubt that kind of mind-body strategy can help keep a man young. Get used to it. Sterling K. Brown is gonna be around awhile.

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IT'S A COOL late-summer afternoon in Telluride, Colorado. Jagged Rocky Mountain peaks frame a blue sky, and the buzz in the air owes as much to the 8,750-foot elevation as to the lanyard-wearing cinephiles swarming the ski towns world-renowned film festivalthe flannel shirt of Hollywood junkets. About 12 hours earlier, the audience at the Chuck Jones Cinema gave a standing ovation to Sterling K. Brown and his costars after the premiere of a new movie called Waves, and no ...

Moh stood up and found himself toe-to-toe with the Academy Awardwinning director, not knowing what to expect. So heres what Im thinking for the fight, said Tarantino, who then spent the next five minutes taking Moh through the Hong Kongstyle martial-arts moves hed picked up from a lifetime of watching kung fu movies. Moh labored to keep up. At one point, hes down on the floor, Moh says. Then hes up in the air. By the end of it, we were both sweating. It was wild.

The 35-year-old won the role in the Tarantino filmwhich, among other things, aspires to acquaint a new generation with Bruce Lees impact on film and martial arts. Before the kung fu movie craze blew up in the 60s, it was a purely Hong Kong phenomenon. But that all changed in the spring of 1973, when Lees The Big Boss landed in U.S. theaters. It relaunched the Hong Kong film superstarwho until then was better known stateside for his work on the one-and-done season of ABCs The Green Hornetand sent kung fu movies flooding onto our shores. At one point, says Matthew Polly, author of Bruce Lee: A Life, there were 30 chop-socky films from Hong Kong playing in New York City.

Mike Moh, as Bruce Lee, fighting with Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.

Then Enter the Dragon dropped in the summer of 73a month after Lees untimely death at age 32and broke the mold. It was the first kung fu film to be produced expressly for an American audience and made it trendy to use real martial-arts practitioners as actors. Many American movie stuntmen complained that Lees quick and close fighting style, which he called Jeet Kune Do, moved too fast. They were all used to the John Wayne punch that misses by three feet, Polly says. Bruce wanted to get in close, do a bunch of things, and just barely miss. Guys didnt know how to react. Dragon was a box-office smash that established martial-arts movies as a bona fide action subgenre.

In the process, Lee became a household name and a wiry fitness legend whose likeness became as prevalent inside gyms as it was in the martial-arts studios popping up across the country. If you think about men in terms of iconic physiques, theres Arnold and then theres Bruce, says Moh, who first watched Dragon at age eight. He connected with Lees swagger and underdog status. You have this automatic picture of Bruce just ripped with his shirt off and his big aviators on. That was all the motivation he needed to begin doing pushups in the basement of his home and perfecting his Lee impression in the mirror. Moh started tae kwon do lessons at 12. Bruce is the GOAT. Im not trying to be the next Bruce Lee, he says. Im just trying to do him justice.

Like Lee, Moh, a fifth-degree tae kwon do black belt, is an actorslashmartial-arts instructor with his very own school (in Waunakee, Wisconsin, where he lives). Like Lee, he fights with a sort of hyperkinetic grace. Like Lee, hes married with kids and prides himself on being a family man. And like Lee, hes had doors slammed in his face in Hollywood. I didnt get into acting because I thought the only way I could make my mark is by being a martial artist, he says. It just so happened that I was drawn to kung fu flicks.

Thats a testament to Lees influence on kung fu films, which had fallen out of favor at the box office by the time Moh was growing up in the Twin Cities during the 80s and 90smostly because no other headliner could approach Lees blend of skill, charisma, and English fluency. Its also a testament to the subgenres impact on action choreography. The Matrix in particular did something powerful, which was to incorporate a kung fu movie into a completely different genre, says Polly. Now when you watch a Marvel fight scene, theyre throwing knees and elbows and kicks. Theyre martial-arts badasses.

Moh, aged 12, two years before he earned his black belt in tae kwan do.

The same goes for after-school shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which Moh binge-watched. Its almost too fitting that his first acting break came courtesy of a chance encounter with Mike Chat (aka the Blue Lightspeed Rescue Power Ranger), who recruited Moh for a stunt role in a Hong Kong action comedy starring Jackie Chan in 2005. Jackie would eat with the stunt guys. He also helped direct. He also swept the floor, Moh recalls. It was eye-opening.

Those lessons in humility helped Moh deal with casting directors who saw him as little more than a major martial-arts talent with minor acting chops. Even past attempts to play Lee ended in rejection. Honestly, it seemed like I was cursed, Moh says. Like, Okay, maybe this is not meant to happen. But then, after that sweaty sparring session with Tarantino, he scored his breakthrough.

Mohs resemblance to Lee starts with his five-foot-eight frame. (Lee was five-foot-seven.) But hes heavier, at 145 poundsLee was a zero-body-fat 135. Lee was years ahead with his approach to training, too: The fitness polymath lifted weights, did calisthenics, ran intervals, and skipped rope, as well as mixing martial arts long before MMA was a thing. Moh admits he cant peacock like Lee, who could do single-arm, two-finger, and thumb-only pushups. Mohs training is focused on tae kwon do, but for this role, he did more weights to tone his muscle and cut carbs to claw out that six-pack. Moh also practiced kicks and punches for hours to imitate Lees grace and flow. Bruce wanted that animalistic spirit to come out in his movements. You hear Bruces WoooooAAAAHHHH and you know.

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood hits theaters the same year as the finale of AMCs martial-arts drama Into the Badlands and the debut of Cinemaxs kung fu crime series Warrior (based on a concept Lee came up with). While its still too early to say whether this is a blip or a trend, Once Upon a Time has rekindled Americas fascination with Lee, an actor who was often imitated but not especially well, though Jason Scott Lee (no relation) set a worthy standard in the 1993 biopic Dragon.

Mohs take, which became the unexpected highlight of the Once Upon a Time trailer, earned even higher marks. When I watched him, says Polly, I was like, yeah, thats righteous. He gets the aspect of who Bruce Lee was as a character onscreen. Most of all, he nails Lees accent, a mix of Hong Kong and American English. Moh never anticipated so much buzz about whether hed play Lee again. What I really want to do is work on great projects with great people, he says. And if that happens to fall in line with something thats Bruce-related, it would be my honor to do it again. In the meantime, hell settle for defying audiences expectations. Just like Lee.

The first time Mike Moh met Quentin Tarantino, they were crammed into a small room inside a Los Angeles casting office. Moh was in the second round of auditions for the role of Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (out July 26). After watching Moh deliver his lines, Tarantino pounced. Lets get you up on your feet, he said.

Enter The Next Dragon

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Andrew Lawrence

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Enter The Next Dragon