Jean-Claude van Damme is set to divorce his wife Gladys Portugues for a second time. This will make it the fifth time the actor has been divorced, as he was previously married to Gladys once before, and also counts Maria Rodriguez, Cynthia Derderian and Darcy LaPier as his former spouses.
Paperwork filed at a Los Angeles court earlier this week showed Gladys requesting a divorce from her husband, 16 years after they remarried.
The documents cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for their split, and the initial date of Jean-Claude and Gladys’ separation was listed as 7 March.
Gladys, who has two adult children Kristopher and Bianca with her estranged husband, is said to be seeking spousal support. She has also reportedly asked to no longer have Jean-Claude’s real last name, which is Van Varenberg.
The documents also stated that former bodybuilder Gladys resides in Los Angeles while the Kickboxer star, 54, lives in Hong Kong.
The Belgian actor and martial artist – who rose to fame in the eighties as the muscles from Brussels – first wed his wife in 1987. The couple divorced for the first time in 1992 after it became apparent that Jean-Claude had had an affair with actress Darcy LaPier.
Jean-Claude van Damme then married his fourth wife Darcy LaPier
Jean-Claude then married Darcy in 1994 for three years. The pair have one son together, Nicholas.
Darcy was pregnant with the couple’s baby when Jean-Claude cheated on his wife with his Street Fighter co-star Kylie Minogue. Darcy was not aware of the tryst until Jean-Claude publicly admitted it in 2012, years after they had split.
“Yes. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. It happened,” Jean-Claude confessed to The Guardian. “I was in Thailand, we had an affair. It would be abnormal not to have had an affair, she’s so beautiful and she was there in front of me every day with a beautiful smile, simpatico, so charming, she wasn’t acting like a big star. She’s a great lady.”
Gladys Portugues and her estranged husband Jean-Claude van Damme filed for divorce for a second time in March
When Darcy heard of the affair, she responded in an interview with Fox News, saying: “I was shocked he would talk to the press about this all these years later to gain some notoriety. I didn’t know about it, I have had my feelings hurt and I feel betrayed. The fact is I was pregnant with our son at the time.”
Jean-Claude, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder a year after his divorce from Darcy, went on to remarry his ex-wife Gladys in 1999. The pair were most recently spotted holding hands at LAX airport in late January – just a few weeks before Gladys filed for divorce.
