Do we like them?

Do we like Jean-Claude Van Damme?

Our score: 4 out of 10. Not much harmful campaigning of his own turned up, but an unresolved allegation, a gay-marriage gag and Putin chumminess leave him mid-table.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is the Brussels-born karate champ who became the 'Muscles from Brussels' and one of the big action names of the 1990s. These days he's talked about as much for who he's pally with as for any new hits, a theme The Ringer drew out in a 2017 piece that put him next to Steven Seagal, Trump and Putin.

The heavy one is from April 2025. Euronews reported that a complaint lodged with Romanian prosecutors alleged he accepted an offer of women from men who were already under investigation there. It is an allegation only, and his agent called it 'grotesque'. I couldn't find any report of charges against him, so it stays unresolved.

On the harm check, the clearest mark is from 2018, when he was asked about same-sex marriage on French TV and quipped that 'dogs get married' too. The gag drew complaints and a rebuke from the minister on the show, and he later said he had nothing against gay people. It reads as a clumsy joke, not a campaign, and nothing on trans people, climate or vaccines turned up.

The politics is the other flag. In 2017 he told The Ringer 'we need Donald Trump', and in April 2025 he asked Putin for an 'ambassador of peace' job and sent a 'big kiss' to Russia. That's friendliness to a leader at war, not hate speech, and where you land depends on whether you read it as naive schmoozing or as cosying up to a regime.

Nothing new on him lately that we could verify. A March 2026 Hong Kong art show turned up in search results, but we couldn't open that article, so we've left it out. On the good side, we found hints of animal-charity work, but couldn't open a page to confirm it, so we won't pad the ledger.