Ivan Drago could return, Dolph Lundgren tells Variety, ahead of the screening of Andrew Holmes’ documentary about the action star, “Dolph: Unbreakable,” on Saturday at the Torino Film Festival, which Lundgren is attending. “I could still show another side of this guy. Another human side, although I showed a little bit of that in ‘Creed II,’” Lundgren, who first played Drago in “Rocky IV,” adds. “He’s interesting because he’s so hard on the surface. Drago was my first big movie character and he was very well suited to me: I was a big guy, a fighter. The less I did, the more powerful I seemed. I think I could do it again, if there was a project with a good script.” Lundgren, born in Sweden, became known also thanks to “Universal Soldier” and “Masters of the Universe” back when action was real. “In the 1980s and 90s, when if you wanted to be a star, you had to look the part. You had to have real muscles, because they couldn’t create them in a computer. You had to work out, do your own stunts and look believable running, jumping and beating everybody up,” he says. “There were only a few guys who could do that and still be decent actors, but everything changed when Tim Burton put Michael Keaton in a muscle suit. He took a dramatic actor, hired a few doubles and stunt guys to do all the fights, and that changed the action genre forever.” Before, it used to be a “painful career,” with the old guard still counting their scars. But there’s a camaraderie that comes with it, he insists when discussing “Dolph: Unbreakable,” where some of them are featured. “If you’re a pro football player or if you go to war, it’s going to be painful also if you’re trying to be an action star. No one said it was going to be easy, but it was harder than I thought. Then again, so is everything in life that’s worth anything,” he says. “Sly and Arnold used to be rivals, but people mellow with age. We’ve all been grateful that we’re still around. People will be watching these movies 20, 30 years from now and looking back at that era in a bit of an awe, because I don’t think actors want to go through that kind of discipline anymore. It’s not easy to build a physique like that; it’s a lot of work. I mean, you can’t beat Arnold as Conan [the Barbarian]. You can never beat that.” Lundgren’s best characters were a laconic mystery, but these days he’s all about transparency also about his health struggles. “If you are being honest, people relate to you more. They have the same problems. If I talk about cancer, maybe they’ll get a second opinion or get some help.” When he got sick in 2020, he insisted on keeping on filming. “For a while, everything looked good. I had surgery and they removed some tumors from my left kidney. Then I went to London to shoot ‘Aquaman’ and the treatment wasn’t working. It was serious.” “I had a man-to-man with the doctor when my wife wasn’t there. We were engaged at that time. He said: ‘You have three years left.’ I drew up my will, started to plan my own funeral and realized I may not be around when this documentary is released. I wanted to leave something my kids and my fans could watch.” Another specialist and another diagnosis later, Lundgren is doing well. His work ethic hasn’t really changed, either. “I like to work. It keeps me young and it keeps me alive,” he says. Holmes says: “He wasn’t going to stop. There’s a tremendous amount of respect for the process when he’s saying: ‘I started this film. I want to make sure it gets finished.’” “Dolph’s cancer wasn’t public when we interviewed Van Damme. We told him in confidence and it completely sidelined him. They weren’t super close, but that’s how much these guys mean to each other. They lived in an era that’s completely gone and put their bodies through hell. You’re getting paid all this money, but if you don’t have a body to use in your last quarter of life, was it worth it?” After years and years of actioners, Lundgren might be ready for different acting challenges. “I would like to be a little more internal, more normal. I’m drawn to those scripts. I would love to do stuff like that and maybe I eventually will, because this whole cancer journey has made me a different person. It has made me quieter,” he says. “I’ve always felt a bit insecure about my status in Hollywood as an actor that I wasn’t good enough and didn’t act in award-winning pictures. But I think my main mission has been to entertain people and make them feel good.” He adds: “A lot of movies I’ve made are obviously for the masses: for regular people, valet parkers and blue-collar workers. It’s a different type of recognition. Part of the payoff is when they say they love my movies or used to watch them with their dad who’s not around anymore. It’s quite emotional for me to hear that, you know.” When he first arrived to Hollywood, his looks were what he had, so he kept doing what he did best. “Hollywood is a business. You can’t make a movie just for the hell of it or to express yourself. Maybe in Sweden, if you’re Bergman. If a guy shows up, he’s good-looking, has muscles and can do action, you’re going to hire him for that. You don’t need him to be a good actor. That happened to me for a long time,” he recalls. “It made me sad. I wanted to express myself, but I didn’t know how to do it. Maybe this doc is a part of that, you know? Maybe it’s a first step towards that.” Holmes chimes in: “People who are in the spotlight never assume they’re wrong. Dolph was very, very quick to admit when he’d made mistakes in his life. My producer Adam Scorgie would say: ‘Wow, he’s being really open. When is it gonna change?’ And it never really did, honestly.” Lundgren is “even more interesting outside of acting,” he states. “He’s played some iconic roles, but do people know he had a master’s in chemical engineering? That he was Sweden’s national karate champion, that he dated Grace Jones and dropped out of MIT to live like a celebrity at Studio 54?” He didn’t want to repeat familiar stories in the doc. “We don’t talk about the time when Dolph stopped Sly’s heart when he punched him in the chest [on ‘Rocky IV’], because that story has been told so many times. But we talk about how Sly saw himself in this young man: someone he could go to war with and rehearse for six months every single day. No one’s rehearsing for six months for a fight scene anymore.” “Dolph: Unbreakable,” now running at only 78 minutes, could expand in the future according to buyers’ wishes. “A lot of these docs get made when there’s no more career left. But Dolph’s got a lot of work left in him, especially as a director,” says Holmes. “When he was younger, his career was about taking steps other people told him to take. Now, Dolph is fully in control of what he wants to do.”.
https://variety.com/2025/film/global/dolph-lundgren-dramatic-roles-ivan-drago-documentary-1236588017/
