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Van Damme and his appearance on ‘Friends’: “It was one of the most embarrassing of my career”
The actor recalls his cameo on the legendary sit-com: “My performance was very bad.”
Jean Claude Van Damme can boast of having had a long and successful career in the film industry. His outsize muscles and stunning acrobatics undoubtedly mark a before and after in the action genre, although there were those in the industry who thought his talents should be used in other genres.
With retirement on the horizon after the release of his latest semi-autobiographical film, ‘What is my name?’, the actor recalled his appearance in one of the most famous television series of all time, ‘Friends’. However the Belgian martial arts expert doesn’t recall his cameo fondly: “That appearance on ‘Friends’ was one of the most embarrassing of my career,” he said, speaking to fitness and lifestyle magazine Men’s Health.
Van Damme: “My performance was very bad”
The Belgian performer referred to his appearance in the legendary comedy as “a bit strange”, explaining: “My performance was very bad. I looked like a ham and say something like ‘hello, girls’. It’s like I’m ashamed of myself.”
But, if he remembers anything, it is was when Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox showed up to greet him on set: “I was on the set, and those girls go and kiss me, and they kiss me on the lips. I didn’t know what to do, how to do it... It was strange, but they were very kind. The truth is that I didn’t know much about that series... So when I went to record, I see those two beautiful girls and they tell me that it is the fashionable series at that moment. So I was very happy. Also, my agent told me, ‘You have to do an episode with them. So you’re going to play that role no matter what.”
According to Van Damme however, working on the set of Friends was useful, because he was also able to see how everything worked to perfection, and it had an impact on his fame beyond his fans who only knew him for his action movies: “I arrived at a place where everything worked like a very well-oiled engine and it was incredible. And there are still people who remember me more for that episode than for all my films combined.”