dolph lundgren

Born in Spânga, Stockholm (Sweden) on November 3, 1957, Hans Lundgren (his real name) was a model student. At the age of 14 he became interested in martial arts and soon after he would start a regular bodybuilding routine that would gradually turn him into an extremely stocky man. In the early 1980s, he won several karate championships.

However, he did not neglect his studies. In 1982 he finished his studies in Chemical Engineering at Stockholm University, and the following year he obtained a Fulbright Scholarship, from MIT in Massachusetts, in Mathematics, for which he traveled several times to the United States.

Having become the boyfriend of model Grace Jones on American soil , Dolph Lundgren made his film debut alongside her, playing her bodyguard in A View to a Kill , Roger Moore ‘s latest film as James Bond.

When he was cast along with 5,000 other applicants to play Soviet boxer Ivan Drago in Rocky IV , he was turned down for being too tall for the part. But after seeing the evidence they thought better of it, so when he had already forgotten about the matter, Dolph Lundgren received a call from the production company. The role was his, since Sylvester Stallone himself had been very impressed with his musculature.

The film became a mass phenomenon, which completely changed the life of Dolph Lundgren, who became very popular. He began modeling for magazines and moved to Los Angeles to try to make it in the movies. Soon, he was offered to play He-Man, the protagonist of Masters of the Universe , an adaptation of the adventures of Mattel’s children’s dolls. But due to its worrisome lack of quality, it flopped at the box office, so both planned sequels were cancelled.

After the infamous action film Red Scorpion , Dolph Lundgren is typecast as the typical rude and lethal hero of the 80s. It was Frank Castle, the Punisher from the Marvel comics in Punisher , an adaptation of series B that did not convince anyone. In the also unsuccessful Little Tokyo. Frontal Attack shared the screen with Brandon Lee , son of Bruce Lee , who later passed away unexpectedly during the filming of The Crow (1994) .

Outside of his association with Sylvester Stallone, the only success Lundgren has achieved was Universal Soldier , where he shared the screen with another of the most popular ‘smite shooters’ of the late 20th century, the Belgian Jean-Claude Van Damme . To promote the film, the production company aired a supposed rivalry between the two protagonists who, according to rumors, were about to come to blows on the day of the premiere. After two television sequels and Universal Soldier: The Return , the latter with Van Damme but without him, Lundgren reappeared in Universal Soldier: Regeneration , from 2009.

After his affair with Grace Jones, and dating model Paula Barbieri for a while, Dolph Lundgren married Anette Qviberg, a jewelry designer and stylist, in 1994. The couple had two daughters, Ida Sigrid and Greta Eveline, with whom they went to live in Marbella. Later the actor would divorce his wife in 2011.

Trapped in films of diminishing quality (some of them, such as Icarus and The Protector , directed by himself), in 2010 his old comrade Sylvester Stallone reinstated him to make him one of the secondary characters in The Expendables , where other stars were present. as Mickey Rourke , Jason Statham and in small roles Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. It got a good response from the public, so the sequel was launched immediately. In promotional interviews, Lundgren defends eighties heroes tooth and nail. “I think kids want figures to look up to, real people, not just superheroes in tights and masks. When I was little I admired Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson , who were real, not cartoon characters,” said the actor.

The actor’s on-screen future couldn’t be more uncertain. Although at first glance it seems that Lundgren has little to contribute to the cinema, beyond the display of his physique, he tries his hand at comedy with Small Apartments .