Saturday, January 21, 2012
Van Dam Biography 2012
Birth Name
Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg
Nickname
Muscles from Brussels
J.C.
Height
5' 9" (1.75 m)
Biography
When Jean-Claude Van Damme became an international film star, there was some debate as to his kick-boxing accomplishments. Former multiple World Kickboxing Champion Don "The Dragon" Wilson even offered Jean-Claude a "$100,000" bounty match to get into the ring and fight him. Van Damme brushed off the "challenge" as a publicity stunt. But, the truth of the matter was that Jean-Claude Van Damme was a successful semi and full-contact fighter who competed in Europe from 1976-1980.
At the age of 12, Van Damme began his martial arts training at Centre National De Karate (National Center of Karate) under the guidance of Master Claude Goetz in Ixelles, Belgium. Van Damme trained for 4 years and earned a spot on the Belgium Karate Team.
In 1976 at the age of sixteen, Jean-Claude started his fight career as a 135-pound lightweight. He debuted under his birth name of Jean Claude Van Varenberg. In his first match, Jean-Claude was staggered by a round-house kick thrown by fellow countryman, Toon Van Oostrum in Brussels, Belgium. Van Damme was badly stunned, but came back to knockout Van Oostrum moments later. Jean-Claude finished the year with a first knockout win over Roland Vedani in a competition in Ingelmunster.
In 1977, at the WAKO Open International in Antwerp, Belgium, Jean-Claude won a decision over fellow team mate Patrick Teugels. Previous reports had Van Damme losing a decision, but a recent video shows Jean-Claude winning the match.At the same tournament, Van Damme knocked out Andre Lemaire in the opening round.
After six months of intense training and sparring, Master Goetz decided to unleash his prized pupil on the European Full-Contact scene. Jean-Claude won his first tournament by scoring 3 knockout victories in one evening. However, in a 1978 match for the Belgium Lightweight Title, he lost a decision to Patrick Teugels. A few months later at Iseghem, Belgium, Van Damme comeback and knocked out Emile Leibman in the first round.
In 1979, Jean-Claude was a member of the Belgium Karate Team when it won the European Team Championships. Next, in his first and only match against a United States opponent, Van Damme faced 'Sherman 'Big Train' Bergman', a kick-boxer from the Miami Beach, Florida. For the first and only time in his career, Jean-Claude was knocked to the canvas after absorbing a powerful left hook from Bergman. However, Jean-Claude climbed off the canvas and with a perfectly timed ax-kick, knocked Bergman out cold in 56 seconds of the first round. Next, Jean-Claude scored a 1st round stoppage of Spain's Gilberto Dias. Jean-Claude ended the year with a decision victory over Patrick Teugels.
In 1980, Jean-Claude Van Damme established himself as one of the best 160-pound, full-contact fighters in Europe. After two tune-up victories, Van Damme knocked out Great Britian and European Middleweight Karate Champion Micheal Heming, and France's Georges Verlugels in 2 rounds.
After these victories, Van Damme caught the attention of the European martial arts community. Professional Karate Magazine publisher and editor Mike Anders, and multiple European Champion Geet Lemmens tabbed Jean-Claude Van Damme as an upcoming prospect. However, Jean-Claude's ambitions now focused in the direction of movie acting.
Before he retired from active competition, Jean-Claude wanted to knockout the only man to defeat him, Patrick Teugels. In 1980, at the Forest Nationals in Brussels,Jean-Claude knocked Teugels down and scored a first round technical knockout victory. Teugels suffered a nose injury and was unable to continue.
Following the victory, Jean-Claude retired from martial arts competition, a year later he launched a comeback. In 1981, Jean-Claude knocked out Henk Besselman in one round, and in 1982, he knocked out Lenny Leikman in three rounds. Jean-Claude's full-contact fight record was 23-1 (22 knockouts).
After Jean-Claude's film career took off, controversy arose because none of his fights were found. Some experts blasted Van Damme as a fake, saying he only had one amateur fight which he lost. But research and the Internet have finally cleared things up. Jean-Claude Van Damme fought his entire fight career under his birth name of Van Varenberg; thus the mix-up.
In August, 2009, it was announced that Jean-Claude Van Damme would return to the ring after a 27 year retirement to fight Thailand's Somrak Khamsing in a match promoted by Japan's K-1. The comeback fight is scheduled for November 2011 in Russia.
Vin Diesel Biography 2012
Every new generation demands its own action heroes. The Seventies had Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood: the Eighties brought Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson: the Nineties gave us Costner and Cruise. Then came the Noughties, complete with computer-generated super-SFX and anti-establishment, skateboard-slacker attitudes. A new kind of hero was called for, a man with the physique for the new extremes of stunt-filled action. He must have a true heart but have his morals warped and emotions hammered by the soul-destroying deceit of what passes for civilisation today. And he must, in a Western society gradually driving racism to the peripheries, be multi-ethnic. Step forward Vin Diesel: muscle-man thespian of no distinct ethnic origin- the first new cinematic superstar of the new Millennium.
He was born Mark Vincent on the 18th of July, 1967, in New York City. Never knowing his biological father, he was told by his astrologer mother Delora (holder of a master's degree in psychology) that he had many different cultural roots - African-American, Italian and possibly Cuban, amongst others. "I've always had less information than I would like to have had", he said later. Matters of identity were further confused by his twin brother, Paul, now a film editor, being blonde with blue eyes.
Young Mark was raised, along with Paul and two younger siblings, in the Westbeth project in Greenwich Village, a government-funded block peopled only by artists. Here he received a major grounding in the imaginative arts, not least from his adoptive father, Irving, an actor and drama teacher.
The kids would go swimming down at the Carmine Street pool, and play hide and seek on the broken-down piers on the Hudson River. And they'd get involved in the project's various projects. Mark made his starring debut onstage when only 5. He wasn't supposed to be the star, he was supposed to be a horse in a kids' production of Cinderella. But Paul, cast as Prince Charming, suffered stage fright after the first act and Mark, never slow in coming forward, stepped into the lead role.
Financially, times were usually hard. "Nobody had money", recalls Vin "so there was this underlying resentment towards money". Consequently, people would make their own entertainment. At 12, Mark became involved in a Sunday night game of Dungeons & Dragons organised by a friend's mother. He became heavily involved in the game and was still buying paraphernalia over 20 years later, when role-playing had become his career as well as his hobby.
James Franco Girlfriend Pictures 2012 Unseen
James Franco splits from girlfriend. The 127 Hours actor has confirmed his five-year romance with Ahna O’Reilly has ended because he is so busy with his other education commitments, although he did not reveal when they ended their relationship.
“It’s over. That lasted about four or five years. We’d been living together in Los Angeles and then came to New York to go to school for two years. Then I signed up for more school at Yale. I think that was it for her,” said James.
James admits he hasn’t had much luck with women, particularly when he was at school because he was so “shy and awkward”.
Asked when he lost his virginity, he said, “In high school with my girlfriend. Her name was Jasmine. We went out freshman year and then I blew it. She kind of got over me, but we got back together at the beginning of junior year and dated for two years. She was my first real relationship.
“I think girls liked me, but I was awkward, shy and emotionally immature, so I didn’t have a ton of girlfriends. I had short-term relationships and always got dumped, I think because I was too slow for them.”
John Travolta Biography 2012
John Joseph Travolta was born on the 18th of February, 1954, in Englewood, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore, was a semi-pro footballer turned tyre salesman. His mother, Helen, was the entertainer in the family. She had played in a radio vocal group called The Sunshine Sisters, and had acted and directed before becoming a high school drama teacher. John also had five brothers and sisters - Joey and Sam, and Ellen, Ann and Margaret. All of them have worked in TV, film or music. This clearly had much to do with Helen's influence, but also Salvatore's who encouraged his children by assembling a small theatre in the family's basement. When John Travolta stepped up to play the Bill Clinton character in the supposedly true-to-life political drama Primary Colours, the coincidence was not lost on America's journalists. Clinton was known across the nation as The Comeback Kid and Travolta, in the previous four years, had achieved a return to prominence rarely paralleled in cinema's history. Having in the late Seventies been the biggest star on the planet, he'd spent the Eighties in a deep hole beneath the gutter. Now, suddenly, by an outrageous fluke of timing, he was a $20 million man, capable of carrying mediocre movies over the $100 million mark - a producer's dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. Irish-Italian ones clearly have three at least.Young John was very quick to make his career choice. His great loves all pointed him towards a life onstage. He loved The Beatles, and learned to play guitar. He loved to dance, winning a Twist competition at a very young age. And he loved James Cagney. So enamoured was he of acting that little Bone (so called because he was so skinny) actually joined an Actor's Workshop at age 12. Employing all his talents, he played in local musicals and worked in dinner theatre. He took tap lessons from Gene Kelly's brother, Fred, and picked up all the new steps from the groundbreaking TV show Soul Train. It wasn't all work. He rough-housed with the rest - that famous nose of his was originally broken while larking about in the pool. But, as said, his childhood hobbies were a preparation for what was to come.
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