He trained a Jedi Knight

Local man helps Skywalker with his Star Wars moves

BY MICHAEL JANUSONIS
JOURNAL ARTS WRITER

CRANSTON — YOU WON'T FIND Sayed Najem's name listed among the hundreds of moviemakers at the end of Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones which lands in theaters tomorrow.

But the 32-year-old Olympic medal-winning Tae Kwan Do instructor is the one who showed star Hayden Christensen how to wield a light saber for his role in the film as Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi Knight in-training who will go on in the next episode, due out a couple of years from now, to become the much-despised Darth Vader.

Najem, a soft-spoken man whose family emigrated to Canada from Lebanon at age 6 in the 1970s as that nation was being tom apart by war, trained Christensen at the urgings of the then-19-year-old actor's sister, who knew Najem peripherally.

It was almost a year ago when, Najem says, "We trained for 2½ hours a day for five days, outdoors in a park" in Toronto. Christensen had just beaten out dozens of young hopefuls to win the coveted Star Wars role, and he wanted some pointers so that when he arrived on the movie set in Sydney, Australia, he wouldn't look like a complete novice.

"I gave him the ropes. I prepared him. He caught on really well," says Najem, adding that Christensen hadn't previously trained in martial arts, though he was a tennis player.

Najem gave him training in hand movements, punching, flips, how to move around a corner, and handling a tae staff, which resembles the light saber Christensen would wield as Anakin Skywalker in Attack of the Clones.

Images from Article:

TAE KWAN DO martial artist Sayed Najem performs in his studio in Cranston. Last year he trained actor Hayden Chri!itensen in a Toronton park

YOUNG ANAKIN SKYWALKER played by Hayden Christensen