Jean-Claude Van Damme

Van Damme has been married five times to four women. He married Gladys Portugues in 1987, divorced her in 1992, and remarried her in 1999. He was also married to María Rodríguez, Cynthia Derderian and Darcy LaPier. He has three children, Kristopher, Bianca Brigitte and Nicholas, and his children Kristopher and Bianca pursued acting careers.

During the 1990s, Van Damme struggled with cocaine addiction and was arrested for driving under the influence in 1999. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1998 and later discussed managing the condition with medication on Jean-Claude Van Damme: Behind Closed Doors.

Van Damme began studying Shotokan karate in Brussels as a child after his father enrolled him in a karate school. He later trained at the Centre National de Karaté under Claude Goetz and worked in full-contact karate and kickboxing with Dominique Valera. He also studied ballet for five years, alongside weightlifting, taekwondo and Muay Thai.

As a competitor, Van Damme won the Mr. Belgium bodybuilding title in 1978 and the European Professional Karate Association middleweight championship in 1979. He was part of the Belgium Karate Team that won the European Karate Championship in December 1979. He retired from martial arts competition in 1982 with a listed professional kickboxing record of 18 wins and one loss, including 18 knockouts.

Van Damme moved to the United States in the early 1980s to pursue acting. He worked as a waiter, carpet layer, limousine driver, aerobics instructor and nightclub bouncer, and trained with Chuck Norris, who owned the club where Van Damme worked. His early screen appearances included an extra role in Breakin' and a villainous part in No Retreat, No Surrender.

His breakthrough came with Bloodsport in 1988, in which he played martial artist Frank Dux in an underground tournament. He followed it with Cyborg and Kickboxer in 1989, then starred in Lionheart, Death Warrant, Double Impact, Universal Soldier, Nowhere to Run, Hard Target, Timecop and Sudden Death. He played twin brothers in Double Impact and a time-traveling police officer in Timecop.

Van Damme made his directorial debut with The Quest in 1996, also serving as a writer. His collaborations with directors John Woo, Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam helped connect those Hong Kong filmmakers with Western cinema. The late 1990s brought a decline in theatrical success, and many of his subsequent films were released directly to video.

Van Damme returned to the mainstream with JCVD in 2008, playing a fictionalized version of himself in a part-satirical, part-confessional film. The performance received strong reviews, including recognition from Time magazine, and helped restore his standing after several years of direct-to-video releases. He later reprised his role as Luc Deveraux in Universal Soldier: Regeneration and voiced Master Croc in Kung Fu Panda 2 and Kung Fu Panda 3.

In 2012, he played the villain Jean Vilain opposite Sylvester Stallone in The Expendables 2, marking a major return to the action genre. His later credits include Kickboxer: Vengeance, Kickboxer: Retaliation, Black Water, The Bouncer, The Last Mercenary, Minions: The Rise of Gru and Darkness of Man. He also starred in the television series Jean-Claude Van Johnson from 2016 to 2017.

Van Damme's screen persona has extended into video games. The Mortal Kombat character Johnny Cage was inspired by his appearance and clothing in Bloodsport, and Van Damme later provided Cage's voice and likeness for Mortal Kombat 1. He also appeared as Max Valliant in Hitman: World of Assassination.

Van Damme became known for performing flying kicks, flexible splits and other acrobatic techniques in his films. In 2013, he performed a split between two moving trucks in a Volvo Trucks advertisement known as “The Epic Split,” which became a widely viewed viral video. A bronze statue depicting him in a fighting pose was unveiled in Brussels in 2012.

He has supported animal-rights and conservation organizations, including Animals Australia, and has advocated for sanctuaries for endangered species. In 2016, the World Boxing Council named him its Muay Thai ambassador. He was inducted into the Martial Arts History Museum Hall of Fame in 2020 and was appointed an environmental ambassador for the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022.