Steven Seagal continues to find work in straight-to-video productions wherein bad guys standing near him fling themselves through plate-glass windows, while fellow late ’80s/early ’90s throat-puncher Jean-Claude Van Damme looks to reinvent himself in the recently released JCVD. It’s Jason Statham, though, who has inherited their go-to status as the gruffly charismatic star of various gritty, hand-to-hand-combat action flicks, cracking skulls in movies like Crank (and its impending sequel), Chaos, War and Death Race. His latest film is Transporter 3, in which he reprises his role as Frank Martin, a high-end, black-market courier who gets mixed up in various no-good situations. Sharply dressed in just the sort of fancy-man duds that inspire thoughts of an action scene breaking out at a moment’s notice, Statham spoke with me recently about ax attacks, his unlikely path to acting and the enigma that is that announced sequel to The Italian Job. For the full read, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.