Today to Jean-Claude Van Damme
turned 59 years old. The famous actor and fighter is by no means giving up his position: he continues to act in films, develops his own training program, and one can only envy his physical fitness and figure. We tell you what sports the “universal soldier” did in his youth and how he manages to keep his muscles in good shape today.
Most people know Jean-Claude Van Damme as an action actor, along with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But before he got to Hollywood and gained worldwide fame, Van Damme managed to achieve success in the sports field. So, from the age of ten he studied karate, and at the age of 16 he joined the Belgian national team, with which he won the European Championship and received a black belt.
In addition to karate, the actor was fond of kickboxing. In 1979, he defeated American athlete Sherman Bergman, knocking him out in 59 seconds. And in 1980 he won a fight with British champion Michael J. Heming. Van Damme's personal record in kickboxing is 20 victories out of 22 fights, in 13 of which he knocked out his opponents. Also in the early 1980s, Van Damme was a sparring partner of Chuck Norris.
During his film career, Van Damme starred in more than 50 films. His first serious work was the role of the Soviet fighter Ivan Krashinsky in “No Retreat, No Surrender” (1986), dedicated to the memory of Bruce Lee. However, the film “Bloodsport”, which premiered in 1988, brought the Belgian world fame.
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In addition, he played in such cult films as “Kickboxer”, “Universal Soldier”, “Street Fighter”, “The Expendables 2”. Although Van Damme ended his sports career a long time ago, he still continues to act in films. In February 2022, a new film with his participation was released - “We Die Young.”
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Jean-Claude Van Damme owes his athletic figure not only to regular training and proper nutrition, but also to his sports past. In addition to kickboxing and karate, the actor also practiced other types of martial arts: Muay Thai, kung fu and taekwondo.
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Childhood and the beginning of an athlete's career
Jean-Claude began practicing karate at the age of 11 and from that moment he fell in love with the sport for the rest of his life. By the way, in the family of the future movie hero, no one paid much attention to sports exercises. My father had a small flower business, and my mother was a housewife. But the parents really wanted their child to be friends with peers and to be physically healthy. Therefore, no one prevented intensive training. The boy often stayed in the gym by himself after finishing lessons with the coach and continued to study.
Van Damme's first coach taught the guy not only new techniques, but also prepared him psychologically for the fight. Such auto-trainings added to the future movie star’s self-confidence and self-esteem. Perhaps this is what influenced the desire of a teenager from Brussels to become a Hollywood star.
Van Damme's training and parameters in his youth
Jean devoted all his free time to training, so he wore a tracksuit almost everywhere and did not miss the opportunity to show himself either at school or on the street. And since there were no age or weight restrictions in the section he attended, he had to fight with older, stronger and more trained men. Of course, this greatly strengthened the young fighter.
Van Damme's coach, Claude Gets, appreciated the guy's perseverance and all his efforts, so he paid special attention to his preparation. Jean Claude often recalls in his interviews how the trainer gave him a protective suit and set a German shepherd on the student. The dog was trained and only attacked places protected by a special suit, but I didn’t want to succumb to even such bites. You had to protect yourself from a big dog. This and other types of training became part of the film “Kickboxer,” in which the actor depicted the beginning of his sports career on the big screen.
At the age of 18, Jean-Claude Van Damme received a black belt in karate, and already at 20, he knocked out Dietrich Targills with one kick in the first round, for which he was awarded the title of European Champion. In addition to karate, in his youth Van Damme was involved in kickboxing and bodybuilding, was in excellent physical shape and had every chance of a great sports career. But the athlete decided to quit his career as a fighter and connect his life with cinema.
The fighter’s parameters were: 177 cm - height, 85 kg - weight, biceps girth at the peak of his career - 43 cm.
Business and the first difficulties of Jean Claude in Hollywood
At the age of 19, with money from his future wife, Jean Claude opened the California gym, where, in addition to martial arts, classes were held in ballroom dancing, gymnastics and bodybuilding. The income from the sports club was excellent. At the age of 20, the guy had a big house, a latest model car and money for a comfortable life in Europe. Van Damme gave up all this for the sake of his dream of cinema.
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He sold the hall, separated from his wife and went to Hong Kong to meet Raymond Chow. It was this man who made stars out of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. However, Chow refused the guy and did not want to meet with him.
In search of other opportunities to get into big cinema, Van Damme met British actress Jacqueline Bisset, who promised to help if Jean moved to Hollywood. The guy agreed and bought a ticket to America with almost his last money. Imagine his disappointment when the girl did not meet him in Hollywood, and the people at the airport did not speak French.
Thus, Van Damme began the typical work life of an emigrant in the United States. He rented a cheap apartment and worked as a taxi driver, and in his free time he intensively studied English from the cartoon “The Flintstones” and, of course, continued to train to keep in shape.
Steven Seagal
The best thing about what happened to Steven Seagal after the end of his acting career is told by an interesting fact: there are several sites on the Internet that publish exclusively news about him.
The only thing the actor is known for today is regularly making headlines under the strangest pretexts. For example, over the past few years, Seagal has managed to:
- Get into several sex scandals, including the attempted rape of his secretary Kayden Nguyen. At the trial, Nguyen told how Seagal, after the third unsuccessful attempt to take possession of her right at her workplace, chased her with a flashlight to which a pistol was attached. Chilling details were also received from other victims of Seagal’s harassment: one of the women said that Seagal persuaded her to have sex right in the midst of the funeral ceremony of musician Ray Charles.
- Become the face of a weapons company. Declaring that when he gets tired of posing with a grenade launcher, he wants to become part of the Chechen Republic, but after three months he changes his mind and participates in the elections for the head of the state of Arizona.
- When your career in politics ends before it really begins, go on an impromptu world tour: train police officers in Serbia, open the World Nomad Games in Kyrgyzstan and pay a visit to the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
If the world's news outlets didn't have a man like Steven Seagal on their radar, it would be worth inventing him. If the actor remains forever in Belarus to advise the developers of the game World of Warships, the world will become a little less bright.
Van Damme and the mafia: how the future actor made money
The Armenian mafia, which kept the entire block in fear and was engaged in racketeering, very soon reached the new resident - several people attacked Jean Claude and demanded that he give them money. The guy, without much effort, fought off all the bandits at once, which, according to his stories, earned him the respect of all the criminal groups in the city. Sometimes mafia leaders even asked the future star to join or fight on the side of one of the gangs.
Chuck Norris, whom Van Damme met while training in his gym, also appreciated the latter’s physical fitness and offered the guy a part-time job. Jean Claude happily agreed and began working as a bouncer at a sports club, and also earned money as a coach and participated in illegal fights.
So, life in Hollywood turned out to be not at all as easy and joyful as Jean dreamed of it. But the guy was not going to give up.
Chuck Norris
In March 2016, Chuck Norris turned 76 years old. During this time, an Oklahoma-born actor named Carlos Ray Norris managed to serve in the US Air Force, star in more than thirty action films and eight seasons of the legendary police television series “Cool Walker. Justice the Texas way."
In addition to his creative successes, Norris managed to become the hero of one of the most popular memes named after him in the mid-2000s. The essence of the meme was that the hero of the “Texas Ranger” was assigned inhuman abilities that instilled fear and awe in everyone around:
- Chuck Norris was bitten by a cobra. After five days of hellish agony, the cobra died.
- Chuck Norris never dials the wrong number, it's just people dialing the wrong phone.
- If Chuck Norris were the Spartan from the movie 300, the film would be called 1.
- Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird.
- Chuck Norris's calendar skips April 1st because it doesn't dare call Chuck Norris a fool.
The meme became so famous that in 2008, the actor collected his favorite jokes about himself in the book “The Official Book of Chuck Norris Facts” and commented on some of them on its pages.
Now Norris is popularizing his martial art, Chan Kuk Do. The actor regularly travels to conferences and championships, representing his sport, but he has not yet achieved much success in this field.
Norris has also been often seen surrounded by politicians in recent years. For ten years he has been writing a political column on the WorldNetDaily website. The impressions from reading it are strange: it is very unexpected to see from a person known for on-screen fights an analysis of Donald Trump’s position on the issues of illegal immigrants.
A staunch Republican, Norris supports candidates from his party every election and appears in the news more often than many other participants on this list for truly respectable reasons. Many faded stars would do well to learn from Cool Walker: with what degree of self-irony he took a joke in his honor and how concerned he was about the future of his country.
The beginning of the acting career of Jean-Claude Van Damme
All the time that Jean Claude spent in Hollywood, he sent his photos and resumes to any vacancies and screen tests to all studios. Soon the guy really had a chance to show himself. To avoid being ignored once again, he showed off an excellent kick. By the way, the leg flew a centimeter from the head of Menahem Golan, a famous film director and producer of Cannon Films.
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Fortunately, the director did not call the police, but invited Van Damme to the office. During the meeting, the actor took two chairs, sat on them in splits and did not move while the conversation was going on.
Golan immediately realized that in front of him was not only a very hardworking and talented, but also a hungry guy: he did not ask for money, did not demand agency fees or commissions, since the athlete did not even have a lawyer. Therefore, the contract was signed for three films at once. It seemed that a white streak had finally begun in the life of Jean Claude.
However, already the first film in which the actor starred was predicted to be a failure. Director Menahem Golan even refused to spend money on advertising an obviously unprofitable film. Because of this, Van Damme did not stop looking for work and knocking on the doorsteps of even little-known film studios, starring in episodic roles, and at the same time he was engaged in editing and advertising “Bloodsport”.
Unexpectedly for everyone, the film took off. The box office grossed $15 million, which is much more than the film that was released at the same time with the participation of the famous Sylvester Stallone. The success of Jean Claude Van Damme was obvious. The actor finally woke up famous!
Arnold Schwarzenegger
The former governor of California is trying to regain his former popularity in films. After ending his political career, Schwarzenegger starred in six films, including the duet with Sylvester Stallone "Escape Plan" and the new part of the "Terminator" franchise.
Unfortunately, the plan to return to the screens went awry from the very beginning. Over the years of working in the office, Schwarzenegger lost his existing acting skills, but did not have time to acquire new ones. The Austrian's age also makes itself felt: people who come to the cinema can already see the wrinkles even through the makeup and special effects. As a result, none of the films with his participation over the past five years have become a super hit on the level of “Terminator”.
Arnold is currently busy producing the TV series Rocking Chair. Since it didn’t work out in cinema, it makes sense to try on television - a standard move for those who cannot come to terms with the idea that they are no longer needed by the viewer. The championship of the main muscleman in Hollywood now belongs to Dwayne Johnson, and the former king of gyms and screens is having a hard time competing with him.
The years have also taken their toll on Schwarzenegger’s impeccable form: looking at paparazzi beach photographs, it becomes clear why the former “Mr. Universe” no longer bares his torso on screen.
But wrinkles and gained pounds do not prevent the actor from getting involved in intrigues: in 2011, he separated from his wife Maria Schriver after he made public his long affair with Mildred's maid Patricia Baena. Schwarzenegger and Baena have an illegitimate son, Joseph Baena, who is now 18 years old. Arnold, along with Joseph, often ends up in the lens of the American paparazzi - much more often than with his legitimate four children.
Van Damme's Star Disease
The success of the first film brought Jean hundreds of offers in various films. But the actor remembered all the refusals and was very picky.
Jean agreed to shoot the films “No Retreat, No Surrender”, “Black Eagle”, “Cyborg”, “Kickboxer”, “AWOL”, “Death Warrant”, “Alamagoro”, “Universal Soldier”, etc., which also became successful and brought the actor a lot of money.
Claude himself was happy from the increased attention to his person. He did not miss the opportunity to show off in front of fans, sign autographs and pose for the camera. By the way, the actor himself warned journalists where and when to expect him. He called himself “The Muscles of Brussels” in order to be even more memorable to his already adoring public.
However, critics were less enthusiastic. Reviews came out one after another, calling Van Damme uninteresting and unpromising, and his tricks hackneyed and repetitive.
Of course, this negativity greatly upset the actor, so he answered everyone that “he hasn’t played his main role yet.”
Titles, curtain
The heroes of our childhood have aged. Some went a little crazy, some went into politics, others were overwhelmed by family squabbles. Once incredible superhumans, capable of killing an army of enemies single-handedly and stopping any evil plan, turned out to be ordinary people.
Someone finally took up what his acting career was preventing him from doing. Someone is trying to regain their former glory.
From time to time they now get together in films like “The Expendables” to wash the bones of their acquaintances and have a final blast. It’s worth admitting: the heroes of the video salons have become real pensioners.
