Dolph Lundgren
Dolph Lundgren ( born 3 November 1957) is a Swedish actor, filmmaker and martial artist. Born in Spånga, Sweden, Lundgren became interested in martial arts at a young age. This would lead him to hold the rank of 4th dan black belt in Kyokushin karate and become European champion in 1980 and 1981. In 1982, while studying to get a master’s degree, he became the boyfriend of singer Grace Jones. He moved to New York City with her and started taking acting classes. In 1985, Lundgren had a breakthrough role playing the lead villain as an imposing Soviet boxer named Ivan Drago in Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky IV. Lundgren went on to play lead roles in over 80 action-oriented films including Masters of the Universe (1987), Red Scorpion (1988), The Punisher (1989), I Come in Peace (1990), Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991), Joshua Tree (1993), Men of War (1994), Silent Trigger (1996) and Blackjack (1998).
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Jean-Claude Van Damme (born 18 October 1960) is a Belgian martial artist and actor. Born and raised in Brussels, his father enrolled him in a Shotokan Karate school at the age of ten, which led Van Damme to hold the rank of 2nd-dan black belt in karate, and compete in several karate and kickboxing competitions. As a teenager, he won the middleweight championship of the European Professional Karate Association in 1979 and the Mr. Belgium bodybuilding title in 1978. With the desire of becoming an actor in Hollywood, he moved to the United States in 1982, where he did a variety of jobs and worked on several films, until he got his break as the lead in the martial arts film Bloodsport (1988).
He became a popular action film star and followed up with commercially successful films such as Cyborg, Kickboxer (both 1989), Lionheart, Death Warrant (both 1990), Double Impact (1991), Universal Soldier (1992), Nowhere to Run, Hard Target (both 1993), Timecop, Street Fighter (both 1994), Sudden Death (1995),
The Quest, which marked his directorial debut, and Maximum Risk (both 1996). After a decline in popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he returned to prominence with the critically acclaimed crime drama JCVD (2008). His big return to the action genre was in The Expendables 2 (2012), in which he starred as the villain, opposite Sylvester Stallone.