Nick Diaz is a professional fighter first and foremost, but it seems as though he’s embarking on a new career as he prepares for his acting debut in a film that also stars martial arts legend Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film is called ‘The Darkness of Man’ and it seems pretty obvious what genre it’s going to be given the two men who are appearing in it. It’s being directed by James Cullen Bressack, an experienced director who has already worked with several action stars like Steven Seagal and Bruce Willis during his career.
As Diaz approaches his fortieth birthday this year, it’s clear that he doesn’t have a whole lot of time left in his professional MMA career so it makes sense that he might want to transition onto a new path. He would be far from the first UFC legend to appear in films too, as his old foe Georges St-Pierre famously took on the role of Batroc the Leaper in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and subsequently reprised the role in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier tv series.
This isn’t actually the first time that Nick Diaz and Jean-Claude Van Damme have come into contact either as the pair have trained together long before he was due to make his acting debut, alongside his younger brother Nate Diaz. It remains to be seen if this is just something that Nick Diaz has decided to do for a brief change of pace, or if he’s going to throw himself into a potential acting career over the next few years. It’ll be interesting to see how he fares in his first film, and whether it leads to a whole new path for him to walk down.
The news that Nick Diaz was set to make his acting debut in a film that stars Jean-Claude Van Damme was announced in a post to the official Instagram account of Matt Staudt: