JCVD Talks EX2


The brand new issue of Total Film magazine is out tomorrow, with Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables leading the badass pack.

As part of their cover feature on The Expendables 2,
Total Film had an interview with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Here are some bits of the interview.

On working with all those action screen legends, JCVD told the magazine, “I have lots of respect for them, so I felt great. Stallone was very happy about my acting. He was kinda upset because he didn’t know which take to take. So he’s a great teacher in a sense of knowing the character. Very intelligent.

"He’s really making a movie as an Expendable. It’s almost like he has his own world. He’s created a world and he’s in that world. I have a lot of respect for that because he really showed me how much a person can love a film.

“And then being with all those guys was kinda cool because I knew all of them before. I met them on the screen. I met them on my way up when I was just doing movies like Bloodsport, Kickboxer… And then the opening of Hollywood Planet. So it was kinda like a reunion.”

“So I’ve got to say a big thank you to the idea of Stallone putting the Expendables together, and to choose me for the villain. I wanted to play the villain, I said. Which is not stupid. Stallone said, ‘Fuck, he’s giving me the pleasure to kick the shit out of him.’ [Maniacal laugh].”

On being starstruck in his co-stars presence, Van Damme added, “They didn’t see me as Jean-Claude Van Damme in a sense. They saw me running and shaking hands to everyone like kind of a cool kid. That’s how I felt. But I didn’t do it on purpose.”

When talked turned to his breakout with Bloodsport, he was surprisingly humble. “You know, I came out from the street with an agent and we stuck together. So now we’ll see, but I think with the karate wave, I came at the right time at the right place. It was Bruce Lee, then it was Chuck Norris, then suddenly Jean-Claude Van Damme came in as a white guy, so... I guess it’s due to my destiny more than my acting at the time. I was a bad actor, man, but the heart was there.”