Whatever happened to Jean-Claude Van Damme?

Jean-Claude Van Damme began his public life as a teenager in the 1970s—a Belgian-born martial arts prodigy who became a champion in both karate and kickboxing. In the 1980s and 1990s, the charismatic and photogenic "Muscles from Brussels" became an international movie star with starring roles in fight-focused action hits like Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Hard Target, and Timecop. (He even had a cameo as himself on Friends.) And then, just as fast and unlikely as his rise, came the fall. Here's how the man born Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg has occupied himself in recent years.


He returned to the Universal Soldier franchise

One of the biggest hits of Van Damme's early career, the 1992 science-fiction action thriller Universal Soldier paired him up with Dolph Lundgren to tell the story of Luc Deveraux, a deceased Vietnam War veteran resurrected by an experimental military program as a technologically enhanced super-soldier.

While it wasn't a blockbuster sensation, the film performed respectably, bringing in $36 million—enough to inspire plans for a late '90s Universal Soldier TV series which was teased with a pair of direct-to-video movies in 1998. Neither of those sequels starred Van Damme or Lundgren, and when the franchise returned to theaters for 1999's Universal Soldier: The Return, both of the '98 features were bumped out of the series canon.

Van Damme came back for The Return, and although his presence was no longer enough to bring in big box office, the series has proven impressively resilient: both Van Damme and Lundgren signed on for 2009's Universal Soldier: Regeneration—which ignored the TV movies as well as The Return—and the duo reunited again for the franchise-closing Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning in 2012.

He's still making Kickboxer movies

Before he expanded his range with science-fiction action movies laced with martial arts, such as Universal Soldier and Timecop, Van Damme played to his background with a string of martial arts-based movies. One of his earliest was 1989's Kickboxer, in which he played, well, a kickboxer.

Van Damme didn't return for the sequel, but that didn't stop Kickboxer from becoming a full-fledged straight-to-video franchise; for action enthusiasts of the '90s, the series became a Friday night mainstay, expanding to an impressive five installments by 1995 while serving up loads of chop-socky action with replacement leading men like Step by Step veteran Sasha Mitchell and future Iron Chef America star Mark Dacascos.

After laying dormant for more than 20 years, the Kickboxer franchise made a surprising return with 2016's Kickboxer: Vengeance—and Van Damme was once more part of the cast, this time playing a supporting role as a character named Master Durand. If it wasn't quite the starring vehicle the first Kickboxer had been, it must have been a good time for Van Damme—he returned for the the seventh installment, Kickboxer: Retaliation.


He got greedy and it hurt his career

Jean-Claude Van Damme reached his commercial peak with Timecop. The 1994 time-travel thriller earned $44 million at the domestic box office—the most of any live-action movie he's toplined. While the stars of other big 1994 hits remain major draws—Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump), Sandra Bullock (Speed), and Jim Carrey (The Mask)—Van Damme's profile fell far faster. Why? Partly because he miscalculated his clout and marketability at a key moment.

After the success of Timecop, Van Damme was reportedly offered a three-movie deal that would have paid him an astounding $12 million per film. Around the same time, Carrey made headlines by becoming the first $20 million man, so Van Damme rejected the $12 million and asked for the same fee Carrey had negotiated. The three-movie offer was rescinded, and Van Damme ended up on what he later described as a Hollywood "blacklist," effectively ending his blockbuster career.

"Jim Carrey was being paid a fortune. And I wanted to play with the system," Van Damme told The Guardian in 2012. "Like an idiot. Ridiculous."


There's a statue of him in Belgium

Van Damme is famously nicknamed "The Muscles from Brussels," as he was indeed a ripped guy born in the capital city of Belgium. In 2012, Brussels paid tribute to one of its favorite sons with a life-sized bronze statue, forever posed in a fight-ready stance in front of the Westland Shopping Center. A visibly touched Van Damme unveiled the statue himself at a special ceremony in 2012 and spoke at the event, saying the monument "represented the dream of a Brussels kid" and hoping it could serve as a source of inspiration for troubled youth. "If you believe in something strongly enough," he told the crowd, "it can come true."

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