Music & Arts
Four Reasons Dolph Lundgren Is A Real Life Superhuman
At Umgås, we’re lucky to be part of a team that consistently supplies our readers with stories that center on Swedish-American culture and lifestyle. Every now and then, though, we get to write a story that suits not only the Swedish-American lifestyle, but also the innate human appreciation of true greatness.
That story comes in the form of Dolph Lundgren. The Swedish action-movie superstar is, of course, most well-known for his role as Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV,” but we think there’s plenty of other details about his larger-than-life life that are more than worth sharing.
Here are four things you didn’t know about Dolph Lundgren.
#1 He’s a genius.
Before he became the 6-foot-5, muscle-bound intimidator in Hollywood, Lundgren took his first steps to greatness in the classroom. His eagerness to learn was rooted, surprisingly, in his shyness. As he told NPR, he had some allergies as a child that prevented him from playing sports. “I wasn’t very good at sports. So my kind of way to feel like I was somebody was to answer all the questions the teacher asked.” He went on to get his Master’s in Chemical Engineering from the University of Sydney and eventually received a Fulbright Scholarship to MIT. Oh, and he also speaks three languages.
#2 He was Grace Jones’ personal bodyguard.
As Lundgren worked as a bouncer at a nightclub in Australia in preparation for his move to America, he met supermodel, actress and musician Grace Jones. Jones hired Lundgren as her personal bodyguard, and the pair became a couple shortly after. He didn’t spend very long at MIT before Jones convinced him to leave school and pursue acting. Shortly after landing a minor role in the James Bond movie, “A View to a Kill,” Lundgren’s career took off when he earned the role of Soviet boxing powerhouse Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV.”
#3 He actually broke Sylvester Stallone.
It would be fair to say that Lundgren performed the role of Ivan Drago so well, because he wasn’t exactly acting – he’s actually a 3rd dan black belt in Kyokushin karate. Stallone, evidently unaware of Lundgren’s elite skills, suggested that the two ignore the choreography for part of their boxing match on set in favor of real, unscripted sparring. Lundgren obliged, and hit Stallone so hard that his heart began to swell. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Stallone recalls the nine days he spent in intensive care, as well as the insurance company being convinced that he had actually been in a head-on collision, sustaining his injury from a steering wheel to the chest. Stallone told EW, “I said, ‘Well, have you seen Dolph Lundgren? That’s a truck. That’s a steering wheel. That’s a head on collision.’ So they took the film and broke it down frame by frame. They honored the insurance claim.”
#4 He easily could have had a career in music.
Personally, we’re speechless after finding what might be the most gripping performance we’ve ever seen from Lundgren. We’ll let the video speak for itself.
