Jean-Claude Van Damme was born on Oct 18 1960 in Sainte-Agathe Berchem in Brussels. His real name is Jean-Claude Van Varenberg. He started martial arts at the age of 11 and started with Shotokan Karate and later studied Kickboxing, Taekwon-Do, and Muay Thai. His breakthrough movies were Bloodsport (1988) and Kickboxer. Higher budgeted movies followed like Cyborg (1989), Lionheart (1990), Double Impact (1991) and Universal Soldier (1992). He scored his big breakthrough $100 million worldwide hit with Timecop (1994).

He made a lot of movies with Hong Kong directors: John Woo (Hard Target), Ringo Lam (Maximum Risk, Replicant and In Hell and Tsui Hark (Double Team and Knock Off). His directing debut was The Quest(1996).

In recent movies (Replicant, Derailed and In Hell) his acting got more emotional and each movie was basically in different action tones.