Van Damme was a member of the Belgium Karate Team when it won the European Karate Championship on 26 December 1979 at La Coupe François Persoons Karate Tournament in Brussels. From 1976 to 1980, Van Damme compiled a record of 44 victories and 4 defeats in tournament and non-tournament semi-contact matches. Īt the age of 15, Van Damme started his competitive karate career in Belgium. Van Damme trained for four years and he earned a spot on the Belgian Karate Team he later trained in full-contact karate and kickboxing with Dominique Valera. Career Early 1970s to 1980: Martial arts and first film appearanceĪt the age of 12, Van Damme joined the Centre National de Karaté (National Center of Karate) under the guidance of Claude Goetz in Belgium.
If you can survive a ballet workout, you can survive a workout in any other sport." Later he took up both Taekwondo and Muay Thai. According to Van Damme, ballet "is an art, but it's also one of the most difficult sports. At the age of 16, he took up ballet, which he studied for five years. He started lifting weights to improve his physique, which eventually led to a Mr. He eventually earned his black belt in karate at 18. His styles consist of Shōtōkan Karate and Kickboxing. He began martial arts at the age of ten, enrolled by his father in a Shōtōkan karate school. His father is from Brussels and bilingual, and his mother is Flemish (Dutch-speaking). Van Damme was born Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg, on 18 October 1960, in Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Brussels, Belgium, the son of Eliana and Eugène Van Varenberg, who was an accountant and florist.
With the desire of becoming an actor, he moved to the United States in 1982, where he did odd jobs and worked on several films, until he got his break as the lead in the martial arts film Bloodsport (1988). Born and raised in Brussels, Belgium, at the age of ten his father enrolled him in martial arts classes, which led to Van Damme entering several competitions. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg ( French:, Dutch: born 18 October 1960), known professionally as Jean-Claude Van Damme ( French:, Dutch: ), is a Belgian actor, martial artist, filmmaker, and fight choreographer. Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers Other steps you can take to protect your children are: More information about the RTA Label and compatible services can be found here. Parental tools that are compatible with the RTA label will block access to this site. We use the "Restricted To Adults" (RTA) website label to better enable parental filtering. Protect your children from adult content and block access to this site by using parental controls. PARENTS, PLEASE BE ADVISED: If you are a parent, it is your responsibility to keep any age-restricted content from being displayed to your children or wards. Furthermore, you represent and warrant that you will not allow any minor access to this site or services. This website should only be accessed if you are at least 18 years old or of legal age to view such material in your local jurisdiction, whichever is greater. You are about to enter a website that contains explicit material (pornography).