“When we had finished filming our fight scene, both of us were injured,” Bernhardt recalled in 2010. His climatic fight scene with Daniel Bernhardt ( The Matrix Reloaded) ends with a ballpoint pen jabbed into his ear and kicked into his brain.

Martial arts fans also know Miltsakakis as the villainous escaped prisoner Schrek in Bloodsport 4: The Dark Kumite (1999). In Ted Kotcheff’s Weekend at Bernie’s (1989), he played the blase bodybuilder, Klaus, who manipulates the neck of the dead man during the house party.

With a career heavy on fierce fight scenes, Miltsakakis’ film debut surprisingly came in a comedy. Miltsakakis and Van Damme also appeared together in Lionheart (1990) and Derailed (2002). The premise was a rehash of Van Damme’s more successful Bloodsport (1988). In The Quest (1996), Van Damme’s directorial debut, he participates in a winner-takes-all martial arts tournament against a tough Mongolian fighter as buccaneer Roger Moore looks on. The 6-foot-1-inch, 220-pound actor first met the “Muscles From Brussels” onscreen in the post-apocalyptic thriller Cyborg (1989), in which he runs through swamp reeds to launch a surprise attack on Van Damme. The film was directed by Hong Kong legend Ringo Lam, with the impressive action sequences choreographed by stunt icon Charlie Picerni. Gal Gadot Calls Out Silence Over Reports of Sexual Violence During Hamas Attack: 'The World Has Failed the Women of October 7th' “He was a mentor to so many of us who were blessed to have known him,” Brown said.Īs the Russian thug Red Face in Maximum Risk (1996), the hulking Miltsakakis fights Van Damme in a blazing building, in a sauna (where somehow their towels stay on) and finally in an elevator, where the quick-thinking hero stabs him in his foot, then his chest. 10 at his home in Santa Monica, his longtime personal manager, Stephen Brown, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Stefanos Miltsakakis, the powerful martial arts muscleman who squared off against Jean-Claude Van Damme in Maximum Risk, The Quest and three other action films, has died.

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