Verhoeven is an A-list fixture in his home country, and recently wrapped filming on Road House 2 alongside Jake Gyllenhaal. His inner circle includes Kevin Hart and Max Verstappen, and even the King of the Netherlands is a fan.<\/p>\n
Away from Formula One paddocks and movie sets, Verhoeven’s story began amid a turbulent childhood in Bergen op Zoom, near the Belgian border. Raised initially by his mother, who struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, he moved in with his father aged six.<\/p>\n
“My dad came from Kyokushin karate,” Verhoeven says. “He got injured, started boxing, started kickboxing and people started asking him to teach.”<\/p>\n
His father coached with intense, unrelenting discipline.<\/p>\n
“Back then you’re like, ‘why can’t I do this? All my friends are going to the swimming pool tonight. I got to go and train’. Back then it didn’t make too much sense to me, but now I’m super thankful because those were the fundamentals of the discipline I have today.”<\/p>\n
Despite experiencing periods of painful distance, Verhoeven reconciled with his father before his death. <\/p>\n
He also rebuilt his bond with his mother, who passed away earlier this year during his training camp. Processing that grief has provided a sharp perspective on his own role as a parent.<\/p>\n
“Now especially having my own kids, it is [about] how are you going balance that,” Verhoeven says.<\/p>\n
“What are you going to project on them that worked for you? And what are you going project on them that didn’t work for you?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Verhoeven is an A-list fixture in his home country, and recently wrapped filming on Road House 2 alongside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-598425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}