Jean-Claude Van Damme: The 8 Million Dollar Man

When I ask Van Damme whether he finds show business particularly rough on marriage--he's had four wives so far--he says, "Women are very smart. More smart than guys. But, boy, when they love they are so blind. Women? They complain a lot. If you're a bad lover, women will not complain; if you're a good lover, they'll love you like crazy. But if you do one wrong move, like, if I look at that girl over there at the bar, just look at her ...I mean, she's beautiful and I like beauty. What am I supposed to do, look at something ugly? Anyway, I look at a woman and it's like, What are you looking at? Well, I'm looking at a woman. Then it's, Why? Do you want to fuck her? No? Then what's wrong with you? Nothing is wrong, I'm just looking at something beautiful. That's one pressure in this business.

"Two, this is a business with lots of sacrifice. It's past seven o'clock, I'm married, I'm with you. Now, I have to tell [my wife] a story of what's going on. It's trust, you know? But maybe trust doesn't exist anymore. Or maybe only in a few couples. That's why people are getting separated, divorced: missing trust, missing confidence. To be married to any movie star, the partner has to be very strong. Confident. I'm trying the best I can. I like something solid, I like to go home, but I want freedom, too--just to be able to go out and have a drink with some friends. I want a woman who'll say, 'Go, go! Tell me what's going on after. I want to know in the morning what you did. If you tell me everything, I will never be jealous. Even in the worst case, it's okay.'" Does such a trusting soul exist? "I hope so," he says, sighing. "She's somewhere."

Van Damme's currently married to wife number four, Darcy LaPier, the long-legged, former wife of the Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil king. They met, Van Damme tells me, in Hong Kong. "Hong Kong and Paris are the best cities for love," he asserts. "Before making love, I like to have a nice dinner in a nice restaurant with fine wine and a beautiful view. I was in Hong Kong staying on the eighth floor of the Regent Hotel. One night, the phone rang. 'This is Darcy, I'm above you.' Above me? Mentally? Socially? 'No, I'm above you. In the penthouse on the top floor. You climb a staircase to get to it. Can you come up to see me?' I found her, with a big bay window behind her, 360 degree view of the bay of Hong Kong, with the boats going chicka-chugga, chicka-chugga, the music from Bugsy, and champagne. And she said, 'Jean-Claude, make love to me.'"

So, given his own recipe for romance, did he dine before enjoying LaPier's favors? "No," he answers. Just got right down to the business at hand? "Fucking A. I mean, I ate something, but not food. You know what I'm saying?" I've got a rough idea. Has he experienced other memorably indecent proposals? "So many, Stephen," he says, "so many. I can't think of any other that happened right now, because I always look at the future. I'm thinking of the one that might happen tonight, tomorrow." Speaking of proposals, has he ever been paid for his sexual favors? He ponders this one, then says, "No," then, "Yes." Then, "No. Yes. Well, I was not paid. It was for free." He lets out a hearty laugh, crimsoning. "Keep on going, will you?"

I sure will: Has he had any close encounters with co-stars? "I've made love to women who are so good looking, I don't think I could get off on a co-star," he answers, thereby blowing off such screenmates as Rosanna Arquette and Mia Sara. "I've never shtupped a co-star in my whole career. If you sleep with your co-star, she will have no fire in her eyes, no chemistry, because it's like, 'He's mine.' Besides, it's unprofessional to use your name, to use a movie, to meet someone. People are spending so much money to make a good movie, if the co-stars are shtupping each other and then they have a fight in the middle of the picture, it's bad vibes. I could never marry an actress, either. Why? I've talked with people who've done, like, 60, 80 movies; in almost every one, except for maybe the biggest stars, all the actresses shtupped around, if not with the co-star, then with the grip, the electrician. No, no, it's too difficult to be married to an actress."

Or, judging by the way he seems to rivet the attentions of every woman in the room without doing anything, an actor. He smiles at the waitress and says to me, "She likes my shoes," pointing out his pair of hand-tooled boots. "Women are amazingly sensitive to details, like how a man's stitching in his tie goes with a fleck of color in his slacks. You have nicer shoes, Stephen. Now, I look at mine and they look a little cheap. I'm size eight-and-a-half, what size are you? Ten? Eleven?" Eleven-and-a-half, I tell him, with just the right tone of macho braggadocio. "Wow," he says, "you know what they say about big feet." "Right," I answer, "big feet, big shoes." He laughs. "No, 'Big shoes, big dick,' right? I think it's the nose, though, really. But you never know. Ahhh, it's all bullshit, isn't it?"

Well, yeah, actually, but bullshit that's particularly germane to imaginings about all actors, let alone action heroes. So, since he's raised the topic, is his male member a match for his ego, let alone the rest of his pumped-up physique? "I've got a normal dick," he observes. "In America, journalists ask more open questions. In Europe, they've got too many complexes to ask. In Asia, they never ask about it. They would just love to see it." Does he think he might give Asians their wish by showing his all in a big-time movie, such as Stallone toyed with doing in Demolition Man and may do in The Specialist? "Maybe Sly has to do something because people are saying bad stuff about him, like he's got some problems there. So, maybe he wants to say to people, 'Hey, guys, look here!' To me, it's like, who cares? It's not necessary, you know? I believe in fantasy and people have a certain image of you in their fantasy and everyone's fantasy is different. If people see me or Arnold or Stallone naked to the waist, they can imagine anything they want. If you show everything, you give away the surprise."

While the lounge pianist plays a few more Sinatra signature tunes, I ask Van Damme how he handles the fame he's courted so avidly. Religion? Philosophy? "I don't go to church too often anymore," he admits. "I pray at night, in my bed. I should go back to church. Also, I meditate while I train. I can name you five Gods--Buddha, Allah, God, whatever--but it comes down to, if you do something bad to me and I do something bad to you, you know it and I know it. To me, that's God. My guiding philosophy is this: What goes around, comes around. So I try to be nice."

Nice he can be, particularly when we're joined for a spell by Ben, an elfin fellow Belgian. Ben and Van Damme have been buds since they were kids, back when Van Damme was a frail, platinum-haired, eyes-behind-coke-bottle-glasses tyke named Jean-Claude Van Varenberg. They've been friends, Ben says, through "first kiss, first girl, first kick, first fight, first heartbreak, first love. In terms of women, he was a star before he ever made a movie." Ben--older by four years than his friend, who stays, on and off, with Van Damme--observes, "When I was 17 I used to drive my motocross cycle past Jean-Claude's school gates so he could jump on the back and we'd take off with all the fathers of the girls screaming and raising their fists and running after us. Those fathers never caught him. He runs too fast. By the way, has he done any impersonations for you?"

Impersonations? Yes, that's right, Van Damme is an astoundingly acute mimic. "Do Jerry Lewis," Ben urges, and though Van Damme at first protests, the actor finally shoves down his glasses, screws up his eyes, bucks out his teeth and does a dead-on, perfect, hilarious, 30-second capsule of The Nutty Professor. His next imitation may be less recognizable to some Americans, but this one has a point. Ben and I laugh as Van Damme does a prune-faced take on French rock singer/actor Johnny Hallyday, whom Van Damme insists is a "good guy" despite the hypermacho posturing he and Ben could not resist ridiculing when he visited chez Van Damme recently. Says Ben, "He's a fucking bigot, so we shocked the shit out of him, like .. ." He mimes pawing Van Damme then continues, "So we were a couple for the night, just to piss him off. We played it to the hilt, speaking of going to San Francisco and getting married."

But, baiting aside, how does Van Damme, who has a reputation for being anything but a bigot, feel about gay fans? "It doesn't disturb me to have gay fans. Maybe they like me because gay people love beauty in general. They have a high level of taste." I can't help but comment that Van Damme and Ben make one cool, odd couple. "Thank you very much," says Ben, with a slight bow, then, while grinning at his pal, says, "In another life, you'll be my wife, Jack."

The two guys are touching and funny together, especially when they demonstrate for me their ongoing faux-feuding comedy routine--one that's raised eyebrows at Spago and Le Dome--that casts Ben as the cajoling parent, Van Damme as the bratty kid. "Eat your salad," Ben insists. "I don't want to," his famous pal whines. "Eat that salad," Ben growls. Van Damme refuses until Ben hauls off and mock-cracks him across the face. Heads swivel all over the lounge. "Why did you do that," the star wails, barely able to keep a straight face. "Somebody here will see it and it'll be in the Enquirer. VAN DAMME, THE COWARD, GETS SLAPPED."

Ben must leave, but I know Van Damme's remark about the tabloids didn't come from nowhere. Last year, after shooting Hard Target in New Orleans, he was accused by a 25-year-old woman of having strolled, stark naked (and accompanied by Darcy LaPier), into the adjoining room this woman shared with her boyfriend in a French Quarter hotel. The suit charges that Van Damme demanded a foursome with the woman and her boyfriend (with whom, allegedly, they had earlier dined), then forced the woman to perform oral sex on him. Hard Target, indeed.

Although the suit has yet to come up for a legal judgment, Van Damme's blood boils. "You know the expression--?" he asks, breaking off, making the universally-known masturbatory motions with his hand and fist. "Money, money, money. I tell my lawyers, 'Look, I want to go in there and tell them it's not true,' but they say I cannot do that. Why? 'Because you've got something to lose and they have nothing to lose.' But I'm innocent! They say, I know, but you have to settle.' Why? 'You want to go in court and have 12 [jurors] who get paid seven bucks a day, to listen to your blah-blah and to someone else's blah-blah and then make a judgment?' What the fuck is that? Is that the law? Is that what I came here for?"

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