It’s the voice of Jean-Claude Van Damme. How are you, he asks? Before he hears back, there’s a commotion on his end, including his low laugh, Gladys Portugues, Van Damme’s wife, a tiny Chihuahua crying out, and phone fumbling sounds.

“Ah la la,” returns to the line Van Damme sighs. It has a French accent. How are you able to help?

“I have my dog next to me on the table. We recently returned from the Caribbean,” he continues. The dog yaps again, and Van Damme firmly tells her to stop, saying, “Lola, stop it.” “And she is so jealous of my wife, it’s unbelievable.”

Van Damme and Lola have recently visited Monaco, Belgium, France, and Italy. Because Mademoiselle Lola has been staying in different hotels, she has become spoilt. “Right, Lola?” he asks the dog in a high, endearing voice, and then he laughs, seemingly happy that there is a dog in the world who loves him this much. Heh heh heh heh.

Another burst of little barks occurs. Van Damme chuckles. “Lola. Put an end to it. He makes another, harsher attempt. “Lola. Give up. Give up. Give up.

That October, Van Damme turned sixty. He’s been a nobody from Belgium, a worldwide box office hit, a coke-torqued tabloid train wreck, and a throwback, ’90s-style punchline during his stay on this earth. At the age of 38, Van Damme candidly admitted to interviewers that he thought he would die from a massive heart attack by the time he was 50. This was after he stopped using drugs and made a fresh commitment to work, family, fitness, and Gladys, who had taken care of their son and daughter, Kristopher and Bianca, during the years Van Damme had allowed his demons to rule his life.

As his wild years intensified, Van Damme and Gladys divorced in 1992. However, they remarried at the end of the decade, making Gladys his third and fifth wife. Not for her, that is? Van Damme states, “I can’t talk today.” that is, he would not be living. His collapse was well-recorded; gossip columns and leaked depositions from divorce court proceedings presented the standard image of an unbridled celebrity driven mad by his cravings. On the set of 1994’s Street Fighter, when he could be convinced to show up, Van Damme was “coked out of his mind,” writer-director Steven E. de Souza told The Guardian.