In the 1980s there were no special effects like now and Silvester Estallone He was looking for a Soviet antagonist for Rocky Balboa.
His huge physical presence, his ice gaze and his unusual intellect for an action actor made him the ideal candidate. Dolph Lundgren had a combination of brute force, intimidating aura and intelligence.
Lundgren was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1957. It measures 1.96 meters, has black belt in kyokushinkai style karate and also black belt in judo. He was amateur boxer, has a chemical engineer master, studied at MIT and is polyglot.
“I hated him as soon as he saw him. This guy has resulted in the evolutionary line as a thousand years,” said Sylvester Stallone about Dolph Lundgren, whom he recruited to play the Soviet boxer Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.
This confrontation between Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago, in full cold war is one of the most remembered in cinema.
Stallone wanted the scene to seem real so he asked the Swedish actor to “really hit him.” But, as a result spent four days in the intensive.
“It was stupidity,” Stallone said when he remembered the anecdote and said he was surrounded by nuns in the hospital. The coup was as strong as that of a car crash, it caused severe trauma.
However, Stallone never blamed Lundgren. After that final blow, they told the Swedish actor to take a few days off and told him what happened.
However, the role of Drago catapulted Lundgren to fame.
The Swedish actor, nationalized American and suffering from cancer for several years, has participated in innumerable films such as actor, director, screenwriter and producer.
Some of the films in which Lundgren has participated are:
- Master of the Universe, 1987
- The Punisher (Avenger), 1989
- Universal Soldier, 1992
- El Protector, 2004
- Red Revenge, 2005
- The Archangel, 2007
- Aquaman, 2018
- Castle Falls, 2021
- Aquaman 2, 2023
- Wanrd Man, 2024