Van Damme was born JeanClaude Camille François van Varenberg in BerchemSainteAgathe Brussels Belgium to Eliana and Eugène van Varenberg an accountant The Muscles from Brussels started martial arts at the age of eleven His father introduced him to martial arts when he saw his son was physically weak At the age of 12 van Damme began his martial arts training at Centre National De Karate National Center of Karate under the guidance of Master Claude Goetz in Ixelles Belgium Van Damme trained for 4 years and earned a spot on the Belgium Karate Team He won the European professional karate associations middleweight championship as a teenager and also beat the 2nd best karate fighter in the world His goal was to be number one but got sidetracked when he left his hometown of Brussels In 1976 at the age of sixteen JeanClaude started his Martial Arts fight career JeanClaude retired from martial arts in 1982 following a knockout over Nedjad Gharbi in Brussels Belgium JeanClaude posted a 181 18 knockouts kickboxing record and a semicontact record of 414 He came to Hong Kong at the age of 19 for the first time and felt insured to do action movies in Hong Kong In 1981 van Damme moved to Los Angeles He took English classes while working as carpet layer pizza delivery man limo driver and thanks to Chuck Norris he got a job as a bouncer at a club Norris gave van Damme a small role in the movie Missing in Action 1984 but it wasnt good enough to get anybodys attention In 1984 he got his first significant role as a villain named Ivan in the lowbudget movie No Retreat No Surrender 1986 Then one day while walking on the streets JeanClaude spotted a producer for Cannon Pictures and showed some of his martial arts abilities which led to a role in Bloodsport 1988 The movie filmed in Hong Kong was so bad when it was completed it was shelved for almost two years It might have never been released if van Damme did not help them to recut the film and begged producers to release it They finally released the film first in Malaysia and France and then into the US shot on a meager 15 million dollar budget it became a US boxoffice hit in the spring of 1988 It made about 30 million worldwide and audiences supported this film for its new sensational action star JeanClaude van Damme His good looks led to starring roles in higher budgeted movies like Cyborg 1989 AWOL Absent Without Leave 1990 Double Impact 1991 and Universal Soldier 1992 In 1994 he scored with his big breakthrough 100 million worldwide hit Timecop 1994 But in the meantime his personal life was coming apart A divorce followed by a new marriage followed by another divorce It began to show up in his career when his projects began to tank at the box office The Quest 1996 which he directed Maximum Risk 1996 and Double Team 1997 The three films made less than 50 million combined In 1999 he remarried his exwife Gladys Portugues and restarted his lost career to attain new goals With help from his family he faced his problems and made movies like Replicant 2001 Derailed 2002 and In Hell 2003
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