Cancer Taught Dolph Lundgren He’s Not Invincible. Now He’s Finding New Strength.

Our product picks are editor-tested, expert-approved. We may earn a commission through links on our site. Why Trust Us?Getty/MH Illustration6 min readDOLPH LUNDGREN HAS had one hell of a life. From being plucked from obscurity into a modeling career after studying chemical engineering at MIT, to dating Grace Jones, to becoming one of the iconic bad guys of the 1980s, what hasn’t he done? Just one of those things would be a highlight in anybody’s life. But Dolph Lundgren isn’t just anybody.Seemingly cut from stone and delivered to America ready-made to star in films, his path upon arrival from Sweden wasn’t always easy. In the new documentary, Dolph: Unbreakable, Lundgren gets candid about a childhood of abuse and the struggle to put that behind him. He also discusses the films he felt didn’t meet his standards after he was established as a household name thanks to roles in Rocky IV, Universal Soldier, and Masters of the Universe. While there are certainly gems to be discovered in that direct-to-video period, it's fascinating to watch the man many know as Ivan Drago, a brute with few words, open up about his life and career. Perhaps the film’s biggest revelation is that of Lundgren’s fight with cancer, a diagnosis that, at one point, gave him just a few months to live.That fight scaffolds Dolph: Unbreakable, and it’s moving to watch a man so seemingly superhuman allow himself to be so vulnerable. Now, on the other side of that battle and going strong, Lundgren is out in the world touring with his new memoir, Fights Worth Fighting: Finding Strength in Struggle, alongside the doc. Taking a moment from his busy schedule, the 69-year-old legend sat down with Men’s Health to discuss his new fitness app, Brandon Lee and learning from Sylvester Stallone.Score G ProductionsMEN’S HEALTH: How’s your health these days? DOLPH LUNDGREN: It's good, man. It's good. I've been NED—no evidence of disease—for three years now. I'm doing a scan every couple of months. I mean, I still work out. I work out a lot now, actually, like I used to. I’m feeling great. I'm working on a fitness app—My friend Arnold has one. I'm going to do a much smaller personal one about exactly how I work out; It's more confined to what I do.But physically, I feel good. Psychologically, once you have the cancer diagnosis, you're always wondering what's going to come in the future, but it keeps you honest on some level. It keeps me honest about enjoying the moments.MH: Even in the scariest moments of your diagnosis in the documentary, you always looked like you were in great shape. How has your approach to fitness evolved as you’ve gotten older?DL: It's gotten a little more focused. As you get older, you have more responsibilities and you have less time, especially these days with all the digital noise in the world. I think I’ve also gotten a little smarter. The cancer journey made me realize I'm not invincible, and even though I want to do crazy stuff like I used to and spar with 25-year-olds and run up the mountain, I can’t do that anymore.I said, "No, I'm going to cut back on the crazy stuff." And I've devised this workout schedule that's based on 30- to 40-minute workouts a couple times a week, and I've distilled it down to what I think really works, what doesn't get you injured, and what you have access to. Most people have access to a gym. So, most of it is strength training. There's some cardio involved, plus a little movement and mobility from martial arts. I've come up with a pretty clever and pretty efficient program.MH: I love how candid you get in the film, especially about your own work. You’re hard on some of your direct-to-video work, but those projects still have a lot of fans. Is there anything you think went under the radar?DL: Look, what I would say is I'm proud of my own work, but I may not be totally ecstatic about how the films turned out sometimes. I wasn't the director. Some of the movies, however, like Command Performance, I'm very proud of. That's a movie I directed. I think what I said in the doc was that the focus wasn’t necessarily to make a good movie. It was just to make quick money. I definitely feel good about the movies I directed. I feel good about Command Performance and Wanted Man. Movies like I Come in Peace—I know a lot of people like that one. Unfortunately, we couldn’t include that one in the documentary. There’s only so much space. [Laughs] They're all testaments of their time. They may not be prominent, but they've clearly played a part in my life and my development as a person and as an actor.Score G ProductionsMH: Showdown in Little Tokyo is an all-time favorite of mine. I love your dynamic in it with Brandon Lee. What are your memories of him?DL: My main memory of him is that he was a great guy. We really got along very well, both off-screen and on-screen. Obviously, I was a fan of his dad's, Bruce. I think his mom, Linda Lee, was half Swedish. I think her grandmother was from Sweden. He had been to Sweden, and had a quarter of Scandinavian descent. That's why he was tall, and had those good looks—that mix between her and Bruce.He spoke some Swedish, and we bonded over that. Then, of course, the martial arts: he did the same style as his dad, and I was doing Kyokushin karate, a different style. We had such a great time together. I was very, very upset when I got that call a couple years later that he'd gotten killed in some freak accident. He would've certainly been a huge star.MH: You were speaking earlier about your development as an actor. You’ve always been a compelling screen presence, but you’ve become better and better as you’ve gotten older. You give incredible performances in movies like Creed II and Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning. What’s it been like to stretch yourself?DL: It's been great. I remember an interview with Russell Crowe where he was asked, "How do you create a great character?" And he says, "Work with a great director." It's hard to display great acting if you're not working with a great director, because he's the artist. That's why Marlon Brando made bad movies once in a while. He was usually interesting, but maybe the movie was forgettable.As a martial artist, as an engineer, I was used to being trained from the ground up properly for years. Martial arts took seven years to get a black belt. I started acting when I was 23, and I was thrown into a big movie very quickly. The movie was a hit, and suddenly I'm in Hollywood. I'm now starring in my own movies, but I didn't have much experience. I had to learn on the job, and it wasn't easy. But think about Stallone, for instance. He’d done some great acting, but before that, he was a writer. He wanted to be a star early on. I hadn't even thought of it before Rocky IV. It took me years after that to acquire more confidence and skill.With recent films, especially Creed II and Aquaman, I had a chance to work with better directors and actors, and play more interesting characters. I still do action stuff and action comedies where it's not as focused, but I do like to apply myself. Now, I'm interested in applying myself, post-cancer, to dramatic roles to see what happens, because I haven't done it yet. It's going to be interesting. I'm doing some of those kinds of movies this year and next year.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Watch Dolph: Unbreakable HereBrandon Streussnig is a freelance film journalist in New York City with bylines in Vulture, GQ, Inverse, Fangoria and more. He is the creator of the annual Vulture Stunt Awards celebrating the best in cinematic stunt work.