>> From Rinkwork's Comments on Cyborg:
>>
>> Here is a little game I play whenever I watch a >>Van Damme movie: Try to find the point where he >>does his famous jumping spin kick.
>
> --
>
> Wow! I like to watch for the moment why they >explain JCVD has an accent. I don't think people >watching, oh, Sudden Death would need an >explanation of why he talks funny. Out of all >the movies I've seen with him, none of them >actually said he's from Belguim. From Quebec, >from France, sure, but never Belguim.
>

I think the best example of this was the movie Kickboxer, when he had a brother who was Hispanic. I think they explained it by saying that their mother was Hispanic and their father was French, and they had split up when the boys were young. JCVD had gone back to France with his dad, and the Hispanic brother had stayed with mom in California. Great stuff.

I've never understood why he just doesn't make the effort to "talk American". I'm not saying everyone should sound alike, but the usual course of things in Hollywood is that accents are discouraged unless they are British, which are *encouraged*, so long as the person can *also* "talk American" if the need arrises. But if mainstream American acceptance is what he desires, he should probably take a page from Arnold's book, and take the hard edge off the accent.