But you know, it was not about the money. Reading this on mobile? Click here to view Universal called, offering him $12m a film for a three-film deal. And that's when things started to fall apart. The same year saw Van Damme's biggest box-office success, Timecop, which made $100m in the US. I knew Thailand very well, so I showed her my Thailand. It would be abnormal not to have had an affair, she's so beautiful and she was there in front of me every day with a beautiful smile, simpatico, so charming, she wasn't acting like a big star. I don't know, maybe." He sighs, then becomes reflective. I tell him I just want to verify before printing. And let's just say it happened, so what? Who wants to know?" I'm 51 years old, do you know how much I was punched in the face on The Expendables? No, no.
"I tell you what, you should ask her," he says, shirking it. who said that to you?" he asks, clearly forgetting the interview a few years back in which he brought it up himself. The film was critically pounded, but it did good business – and he got to have a fling with co-star Kylie Minogue. For 1994's abysmal videogame adaptation Street Fighter, he was paid $7m. A slew of low-budget fight films followed before he scored bigger mainstream roles in Universal Soldier and Hard Target. He finally landed the lead in Bloodsport, which racked up a substantial profit and made him a star. He spoke little English, and spent years working menial jobs and performing karate kicks in front of anybody connected with the film industry.
#Timecop co star professional
Van Damme first went to America to become an actor in 1981, after achieving professional success in karate and bodybuilding. So I said to Stallone, 'We're two gladiators! I have to kick the shit out of you, and then you kick the shit out of me.' And I think people will love it." "The fans, they want to see Muhammad Ali against Frasier," he says. Still, as the villain in this one, he was very happy to lose the fight, and it was his own suggestion that he and Stallone slug it out with no weapons, just mano-a-mano. He admits, however, that if he's playing a good guy he doesn't like to lose fights. If the King of Thailand is calling me, no, I stay in my room – cutting, cutting, cutting …" Stallone reportedly said that Van Damme refused the role because he didn't want to lose a fight to Jet Li, although this suggestion is vigorously denied ("Bullshit!"). "I said, 'I cannot do it!' And he said, 'Excuse me!?' But I had that fever. "When he called me, I was editing my movie, The Eagle Path," Van Damme explains. He's extremely grateful to Sylvester Stallone, his boyhood hero, for casting him – despite having turned down a role in the first Expendables in 2010. Today, though, older and humbled, he turns out to be a joy to talk to. Bigger success saw that enthusiasm turn to arrogance by the late 90s he'd been married five times and had a coke habit that almost took him out completely. He was desperately eager to please, enthusiasm bursting from his pores as he bounced around the talk show circuit, doing the splits for paparazzi outside LA nightclubs. When he broke out in 1988 in Bloodsport, Van Damme was 27, an action star with the muscles as well as the karate skills. He's the lead villain, and it's the first major film he's appeared in for over a decade, his personal life and career having hit the skids some 15 years ago. Van Damme is calling to talk about his role in The Expendables 2 – basically the Avengers of late-20th century action heroes.
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