MovieChat Forums > Jean-Claude Van Damme Discussion > The reason his film career didnt last lo...

The reason his film career didnt last longer

posted 10 years ago by spacemanspiff00
23 replies | jump to latest

Stallone: Renny Harlin, Richard Donner, Rob Cohen, James Mangold, Ted Kotcheff, John Landis, Robert Rodriguez, George P. Cosmatos, John Huston, Norman Jewison

Schwarzenegger: John Milius, James Cameron (3 times), John McTiernan, Walter Hill, Ivan Reitman (3 times), Paul Verhoeven, Chuck Russell, Peter Hyams, Andrew Davis.

Van Damme: John Woo, Roland Emmerich, Peter Hyams & John G. Avildsen (DTV movie).

Schwarzenegger was able to work with better directors which lead to better movies. While Stallone directed a lot of his hit movies he also worked with quality directors. Van Damme got stuck working with these Chinese and Hong Kong directors and his movies suffered. Now he might be still doing DTV movies now because even Stallone and Schwarzenegger cant open a movie anymore not called The Expendables. I don't know if it was the drug issue that stopped better people from working with him. But even Seagal was able to get Exit Wounds after his career had tanked.

[–] SweetTooth43 (1792) 4 years ago

He also can't act worth a Damme.

[–] PaladinNJ (20313) 3 years ago

He's still working. His career hasn't ended yet.

[–] TandyMan (10372) 3 years ago

JCVD is still a pretty big star, internationally. Not sure why his films went out of style in places like America and what not.

[–] Moonglum9 (10714) 3 years ago

Once he ditched the mullet, America just wasn't interested anymore. You need an intimidating mullet to be a believable action star over here.

[–] Cognoscente (2464) 3 years ago

When The Matrix came out, that was the beginning of the end. Ironically, he had already done HK-style choreography with his first martial arts movie - No Retreat, No Surrender. If he had kept up that style of fighting, he would have been described as being years ahead of his time instead of behind it.

[–] TriumphReq (1857) 3 years ago

Ok so the OP is saying because he's not American and obviously Hollywood is biased against non-Americans. Or more simply he just wasn't there to interact with directors.

[–] TMC-4 (19420) 3 years ago

https://www.quora.com/Why-didn-t-Jean-Claude-Van-Damme-find-more-success-in-the-movie-industry/answer/Jon-Mixon-1

His substance abuse issues - Van Damme’s cocaine use is legendary. He basically made himself almost uninsurable by the industry due to his problems with the drug. While he now seems to have “kicked” the habit, it’s been years since he had a viable career.

Bad film choices - While Van Damme was shrewd enough to make films using popular Hong Kong directors like John Woo, Tsui Hark, and the late Ringo Lam, unfortunately the narratives of those films were shoddy. In fact, following the 1994 minor hit Timecop, it’s difficult to discern which one of Van Damme’s films was the worst.

Bad career management - It’s clear that either Van Damme was getting bad advice, or that his management was unable to get him to listen to good advice. Either way, he was poorly represented and the result was that his career was essentially over by the late 1990s.

He didn’t follow Steven Seagal’s hypocritical career decision - When his career began to slide in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Steven Seagal managed to slow that slide by teaming with various African American actors/rappers like Keenan Ivory Wayans, DMX, and Ja Rule. While these films are mostly terrible, they allowed Seagal to remain a factor in Hollywood long after he should have become a minor character actor, or have even left the business. Van Damme is a lot more talented than Seagal was, or is, and he easily could have gone that route with a better measure of success. Unless you count the abomination Double Team where he was teamed with former NBA star Dennis Rodman, then Van Damme failed to take an expedient route back to success.

Streetfighter failed - It was one of Hollywood’s first attempts to make a film from a popular video game and had it succeeded, Van Damme would have been an A-list Hollywood star for at least the next five years or so following its release.