Ivan Drago could return, Dolph Lundgren told Variety ahead of the screening of Andrew Holmes’ documentary about the action star, Dolph: Unbreakable, at the Turin Film Festival on Saturday.
Lundgren, who first played Drago in “Rocky IV,” added, “We were still able to show a different side of this guy, a different human side that we showed a little bit in ‘Creed II.'” “He’s an interesting character because on the surface he’s very hard. Drago was my first big movie character, and he suited me very well. I’m a big guy, a fighter. The more I did it, the more powerful I looked. I think if I get a project with a good script, I could do it again.”
Swedish-born Lundgren also rose to fame thanks to “Universal Soldier” and “Masters of the Universe,” during a time when action was all the rage.
“In the 1980s and ’90s, if you wanted to be a star, you had to play the role. Computers can’t make muscles, so you had to have real muscles. You had to train, do your own stunts, and look incredible running, jumping, and beating everyone,” he says.
“There were only a few guys who could do that and still be decent actors, but that all changed when Tim Burton put Michael Keaton in a muscle suit. He used a dramatic actor, and he hired some shadow warriors and stuntmen to do all the fighting, and that changed the action genre forever.”
Previously, it was a “painful career”, with the old guard still counting his scars. But it comes with friendship, he insists when discussing “Dolph: Unbreakable,” which features some of them.
“If you’re a pro football player or you go to war, it’s going to be a pain. Same goes if you’re trying to be an action star. No one said it would be easy, but it was harder than I expected. Again, like anything worth having in life,” he says.
“Sly and Arnold used to be rivals, but as you get older you get better. We’ve all been grateful that we exist. In 20, 30 years, people are going to watch these movies and look back on those days with a little bit of awe, because I don’t think actors want to go through that kind of training anymore. It’s not easy to build a physique like that. It’s a lot of hard work. I mean, you can’t beat Arnold as Conan.” (Barbarian) You can’t defeat it. ”
Lundgren’s best characters were concise mysteries, but these days he’s focused on transparency, even opening up about his health struggles.
“If you’re honest, people will empathize with you more. They have the same problems. If I talk about cancer, maybe they’ll get a second opinion or get help.” When he fell ill in 2020, he insisted on continuing filming.
“Everything seemed fine for a while. I had surgery and had some tumors removed from my left kidney. Then I went to London to film ‘Aquaman,’ but the treatments weren’t working. It was serious.”
“I had a one-on-one meeting with my doctor when my wife wasn’t there. We were engaged at the time. He said, ‘You have three years left.’ I started making a will and planning my funeral, but I realized that by the time this documentary came out, I might not be here anymore. I wanted to leave something for my children and my fans to watch.”
According to another specialist and a subsequent diagnosis, Mr. Lundgren is recovering well. His work ethic hasn’t changed at all either. “I like working. It keeps me young and keeps me alive,” he says.
“He had no intention of quitting,” Holmes said. “When he says, ‘I started this movie and I want to make sure it finishes,’ it shows a lot of respect for the process.”
“When we interviewed Van Damme, Dolph’s cancer wasn’t public. We told him in private, and he completely betrayed him. They weren’t particularly close, but that’s how much these two meant to each other. They lived in a time of total loss, and they put their bodies through hell. You get paid all this money, but if you don’t have a body to use for the last quarter of your life, is it worth it?”
Lundgren, who has been an action actor for years, may be ready to try out different acting roles.
“I want to be a little more internal and more normal. I’m drawn to those scripts. I want to do something like that and I probably will eventually, because this whole cancer journey has made me a different person. It’s made me quieter,” he says.
“I’ve always felt a little insecure about my place as an actor in Hollywood, that I wasn’t good enough and that I wasn’t appearing in award-winning films. But I think my main mission was to entertain people and make them feel good.”
“A lot of the movies I’ve made are obviously for the masses. They’re for ordinary people, valet parking, blue-collar workers. It’s a different kind of recognition. Part of the reward is when they say they liked my movies or they used to watch them with their father who is no longer with them. It’s very emotional for me to hear that.”
When he first came to Hollywood, his looks were what he had, and he continued to look his best.
“Hollywood is a business. You can’t make movies just to do what you want to do and express yourself. Bergman might be good in Sweden. If a guy comes along who’s good-looking and has muscles and can do action, you hire him for that. He doesn’t have to be a great actor. That’s what happened to me for a long time,” he recalls.
“I felt sad. I wanted to express myself, but I didn’t know how. Maybe this document is part of that. Maybe it’s the first step towards that.”
Holmes added, “People who are in the spotlight never think they’re wrong. When Dolph made mistakes in his life, he was very, very quick to admit it. My producer Adam Scorgi said, ‘Wow, he’s really open. When is he going to change?'” To be honest, that never really happened. ”
Lundgren is “a much more interesting person outside of acting,” he says. “He’s played some iconic roles, but do people know he got a master’s degree in chemical engineering? That he was a Swedish national karate champion, that he dropped out of MIT to date Grace Jones and live like a celebrity at Studio 54?” He didn’t want to repeat the well-known story in the doc.
“I don’t talk about when Dolph punches Sly in the chest and stops his heart[in Rocky IV]because that story has been told so many times. But I do talk about how Sly saw himself in this young man, someone you could go to war with and rehearse every day for six months. Nobody rehearses for a fight scene for six months anymore.”
“Dolph: Unbreakable” currently runs for just 78 minutes, but the running time may be expanded in the future depending on the buyer’s wishes. “A lot of these docs are made at the end of a career, but Dolph has a lot of work left in him, especially as a director,” Holmes says.
“When he was younger, Dolph’s career was all about taking the steps that others told him to take. Now, Dolph has complete control over what he wants to do.”
