Born in November 3, 1957 in Stockholm, Sweden, Dolph Lundgren is an actor and martial arts expert who is well-known for playing the Russian boxer opposite Sylvester Stallone in the 1985 movie Rocky IV. Born Hans Lundgren, he starred in more than 30 movies and was part of the group of action movie actors that became hugely popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He has starred in movies alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris.
Needless to say, Lundgren’s show business career is unlike any other. After completing his mandatory military service in Sweden, he began studying Kyokushin Karate and even won the European championships at one point. This athleticism would come into play when, in 1996, he would selected as the Team Leader of the 1996 U.S. Olympic Modern Pentathlon Team in the Atlanta Olympics, as he had been very keen in promoting the sport. He is a graduate of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. He even has a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983 but quit two weeks into the program to pursue acting.
Dolph Lundgren made his feature-film debut in a James Bond picture no less, A View to Kill as a henchman named Venz. He went on to beat more than 5,000 hopefuls who auditioned for the role of Ivan Drago, the Russian boxer opposite Stallone in Rocky IV. In an interview Stallone said Lundgret hit him so hard he had swelling around the heart and was even placed in intensive care.
Lundgren landed his first lead role in the 1987 film Masters of the Universe, where he played He-Man. His other movie credits include Red Scorpion, The Punisher, Showdown in Little Tokyo, Universal Soldier, Men of War, and Silent Trigger. In 2004, he made his directorial debut with The Defender.