6 A.M. With...The Combat King

Five days a week, three hours a day, Shadow and Bone star Lewis Tan hits the gym to sweat, kick ass-and sculpt a fighter's body.

- By Kristine Thomason

Lewis Tan Sends a flying knee strike into the sweet spot of a kick pad. On impact, the pad pops, like a firework. It's an image (and a sound!) right out of an '80s action movie-and it's even more impressive since Tan's running on nothing but black coffee and the few hours of sleep he got while flying home to Los Angeles from his training camp in Thailand.

He's at Unbreakable Performance in L. A. on this Sunday morning. And after a 15-minute warmup, the 36-year-old actor has found his flow, delivering combo after combo of martial-arts moves. Five days a week, three hours a day, he does workouts like this. Each session helps him relieve stress and stay strong-but it's about more than that. Tan believes his combat is art, and he wants you to see that in the way he moves and fights in any role he takes on. "It's not just violent. It's beautiful," he says. "With every single movement [my opponent makes], my response is the purest, most truthful that I can be in that moment. It's my character doing [that action], and the emotion that I'm going through is there in the action, in the choreography."