Jean-Claude Van Damme (born Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg, 18 October 1960) is a Belgian martial artist and actor who is best known for martial arts and action movies, the most successful being Timecop and Universal Soldier.
His Belgian background and his physique furnished him the nickname The Muscles from Brussels.
He is the son of Eliana and Eugène Van Varenbergh, who was an accountant and owned a flower shop. He began martial arts at the age of ten, enrolled by his father in a shotokan karate school. He eventually earned his black belt in karate, later winning the European Professional Karate Association's middleweight championship in a stunning upset vs. the former champion Michael J. Heming (although he has claimed that he was "twice world champion". He also started lifting weights to improve his physique, which eventually led to a Mr. Belgium bodybuilding title.
At the age of 16 he took up ballet, which he studied for five years. He says of ballet that it "is an art, but it's also one of the most difficult sports. If you can survive a ballet workout, you can survive a workout in any other sport."
In the French-speaking world, Van Damme is well known for the picaresque aphorisms that he delivers on a wide range of topics (personal well-being, the environment, etc.) in a sort of Zen franglais. Most iconic and often quoted was his repeated use of the English word 'aware' during an interview for a French channel, to convey the notion of self-awareness as a key to success. In a 2009 interview in the British newspaper The Sun, promoting his film JCVD, he indicated he experienced a period of homelessness in Los Angeles "sleeping on the street and starving in L.A."
Van Damme has been married five times, including two marriages with his current wife, bodybuilder and fitness competitor Gladys Portugues. Van Damme has 3 children: Kristopher born 1987, Bianca born 1990, and Nicholas born 1995.
Double Impact featured Van Damme in the dual role of Alex and Chad Wagner, two brothers fighting to avenge the deaths of their parents. This movie reunited him with his former Bloodsport star, Bolo Yeung. He then starred opposite Dolph Lundgren in the action movie Universal Soldier. While it grossed $36,299,898 in the US, it was an even bigger success overseas making over $65 million, well over its modest $20 million budget, making it Van Damme's highest grossing film at the time.
Van Damme followed Nowhere To Run and Hard Target with Timecop in 1994. The film was a huge success, grossing over $100 million worldwide. In the film, Van Damme played a time traveling cop, who tries to prevent the death of his wife. It remains his highest grossing movie to date. After his role in the poorly received Street Fighter, his projects started to fail at the box office. The Quest (1996), which he directed; Maximum Risk (1996) and Double Team (1997) made less than $50 million combined. His last theatrical released movie was Universal Soldier: The Return.
All his movies after this, up until 2008's JCVD, had been direct to video releases. Van Damme had also worked for director John McTiernan for the 1987 movie Predator as the titular alien, before being removed and replaced by Kevin Peter Hall. Van Damme will reprise his role as Luc Devereaux in the upcoming movie Universal Soldiers: The Next Generation.
JCVD was offered a lead role in Sylvester Stallone's upcoming film The Expendables. Stallone called Van Damme personally to offer him the role, but Van Damme turned it down citing that he "doesn't want his career going down that route." Many insiders within the film industry saw this as a poor decision as the film could have re-launched JCVD back into mainstream movies.
Contrary to popular belief, Van Damme does not live in Hong Kong, he left Hong Kong in 1981 to move to LA.