11 Great F*ck You Performances From Hated Actors

1. Jean-Claude Van Damme – JCVD

Never really considered an actor of any depth, Jean Claude Van Damme’s films are the type audiences go to see for impossibly choreographed combat scenes and ridiculously massive explosions rather than thought-provoking content or serious acting but in French director Mabrouk El Mechri’s crime drama JCVD, the Muscles from Brussels proved he had acting chops as well as a black belt in karate.

Playing a fictionalised but familiar version of himself – a past his prime action film star who has moved back to his Belgian hometown after becoming washed up in Hollywood and finds himself unwittingly involved in a bank heist – Van Damme is excellent.

He especially excels during a soul-baring, six-minute-long monologue shot in a single take where he breaks the fourth wall addressing viewers directly while referencing his own problems with drugs and failed marriages. It’s so good, in fact, that it almost makes up for stinkers like Street Fighter.