1985–1995: Breakthrough and action film star Lundgren made his film debut in the 1985
James Bond film
A View to a Kill,
Roger Moore's final film as 007, in the minor role of Venz, a
KGB assassin. His former lover
Grace Jones, who portrayed the villain
May Day, personally recommended him. According to Lundgren, Moore said of him, "Dolph is larger than Denmark." Upon learning that
Sylvester Stallone was seeking an imposing fighter to play Soviet boxer
Ivan Drago in
Rocky IV (1985), Lundgren sent videos and pictures of himself to a distant contact of Stallone, eventually reaching him. Lundgren tried out for the role, but as he himself has stated, he was initially turned down because he was too tall. Lundgren eventually beat 5,000 other hopefuls to land his breakout role opposite Stallone,
Carl Weathers, and
Brigitte Nielsen. To improve his physique and athletic abilities, he trained intensely in
bodybuilding and
boxing for five months before the film was shot. Lundgren said: "We trained six days a week—weights in the morning for about an hour, then boxing in the afternoon. We did a split of chest and back one day and then shoulders, legs, and arms the next. We boxed for an hour and a half, practiced the fight choreography, and did bag work and abs." He weighed during filming, His character's lines "If he dies, he dies" and "I must break you" are amongst the best known of the
Rocky series, and have often been cited in popular culture. Lundgren hit Stallone so hard during the filming of a fight scene that Stallone was in intensive care in the St. John's Hospital for nine days with a blood pressure of 290, due to swelling of the
pericardial sac around his heart. Lundgren later fought in a real boxing match against former
UFC fighter
Oleg Taktarov, and lost via decision. Lundgren has highlighted the premiere of
Rocky IV at the
Mann Village Theatre, in
Westwood, Los Angeles, as the moment which changed his life, remarking: "I walked in to a Westwood movie theater as Grace Jones' boyfriend and walked out ninety minutes later as the movie star Dolph Lundgren. I was shell-shocked for years from the mind-boggling and daunting experience of being a student-athlete from tiny Sweden suddenly having to live up a new action-star persona." and he also got his first lead role as
He-Man in
Masters of the Universe, based on the
popular children's toyline and cartoon, directed by
Gary Goddard. Lundgren weighed his all-time heaviest during the filming at . It is referred to as a "flop" by
Variety magazine, and has a 13% "rotten" rating at
Rotten Tomatoes. Lundgren was criticized for being too wooden as a leading man, and it was dismissed as "a glossy fantasy starring monosyllabic Dolph Lundgren". In 1988, he starred in
Joseph Zito's
Red Scorpion. Lundgren plays a Soviet
KGB agent who is sent to an African country to assassinate the leader of an
anti-communist rebel movement, but eventually switches sides. The film was poorly received and has an 17% "rotten" rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Stephen Holden of
The New York Times said: "Dolph Lundgren's pectorals are the real stars of
Red Scorpion, an action-adventure movie set in the fictional African country of Mombaka. Filmed from below so that one has the sense of peering up at a massive kinetic sculpture, his glistening torso, which over the course of the film is subjected to assorted tortures, is the movie's primary visual focus whenever the action slows down. And since Mr. Lundgren remains stone-faced, rarely speaking except to issue commands in a surprisingly hesitant monotone, his heaving chest actually communicates more emotion than his mumbling lips." In 1989, Lundgren then starred as
Marvel Comics adaptation
The Punisher playing the title role. Directed by
Mark Goldblatt, the film changes some details of the character's origin, and eliminates the signature skull logo. These elements troubled fans of the comic book upon its release and were dismissive. Also initial reviews found it to be a trashy comic book film. The film had a troubled release as the studios who made it were changed ownership. While the film was theatrically released internationally, the film went direct-to-video in the US. However over the years the film developed a cult with some who think it is the best adaptation of the comic. The film was re-evaluated with a much more positive outlook who find Lundgren's performance solid as a ghostly and soul depraved vigilante. '' premiere in 1990 In 1990, Lundgren starred in
Craig R. Baxley's sci-fi thriller
I Come in Peace (also known as
Dark Angel) opposite
Brian Benben,
Betsy Brantley,
Matthias Hues, and
Jay Bilas. Lundgren plays a tough
Houston cop with an inner sensitivity, who does not let the rules of police procedure prevent him pursuing his mission to wipe out a gang of drug dealers who killed his partner. Lundgren said of his role: "What attracted me to Dark Angel is that I get to do more than just action. There's some romance, some comedy, some drama. I actually have some clever dialogue in this one. I get to act." In 1991, Lundgren starred in
Manny Coto's action film
Cover Up opposite
Louis Gossett Jr. Lundgren portrays a US Marine veteran turned reporter, who finds his own life in jeopardy after stumbling across a political cover-up. In
Mark L. Lester's martial arts action film
Showdown in Little Tokyo, he and
Brandon Lee play police officers investigating the
yakuza. The film received a mainly negative reception from critics and was criticized for its violence;
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times described it as "violent, but spiritless."
Variety wrote: "Lundgren can hold his own with other action leads as an actor and could easily be Van Damme-marketable if only he'd devote as much attention to quality control as he does to pectoral development." David J. Fox of the
Los Angeles Times, however, described the film as a "class act", and some retrospective critics find it to be entertaining for its genre. In 1992, Lundgren starred in the sci-fi action picture
Universal Soldier directed by
Roland Emmerich. Lundgren (as Sergeant Andrew Scott) and
Jean-Claude Van Damme (as
Luc Deveraux) play U.S. soldiers who died during the
Vietnam War, only to be later
reanimated in a secret Army project to be sent on missions as GR operatives. At the
1992 Cannes Film Festival, Van Damme and Lundgren were involved in a verbal altercation that almost turned physical, but it was believed to have only been a publicity stunt.
Universal Soldier opened in theatres on 10 July 1992, a moderate success domestically with $36,299,898 in US ticket sales, but a major blockbuster worldwide, making over $65 million overseas, which earned the film a total of $102 million worldwide, on a $23 million budget. Despite being a box office hit, it was not well-received; mainstream critics dismissed the movie as a
Terminator 2 rip-off. Film critic
Roger Ebert said: "it must be fairly thankless to play lunks who have to fight for the entire length of a movie while exchanging monosyllabic idiocies", and included
Universal Soldier in his book
I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie. Lundgren plays Wellman Anthony Santee, a former racecar driver who is framed by police officer Frank Severance (Segal) for the murder of a highway patrolman. Much of the film was filmed in the
Alabama Hills of the Sierra Nevada and the desert of the
Joshua Tree National Park of southeast California. In 1994, Lundgren starred in
Bruce Malmuth's
Pentathlon as an East German
Olympic gold medalist
pentathlete on the run from an abusive coach. Lundgren trained with the U.S. pentathlon team in preparation for the role, which later led to him being selected to serve as the (non-competing) Team Leader of the 1996 U.S. Olympic
Modern Pentathlon team during the
Atlanta Games, to promote the image of the sport and to coordinate planning and other details between the team and the
United States Olympic Committee. The film was seen negatively by most critics;
Film Review said it was "appallingly acted and monotonous" and Video Movie Guide 2002 described it as a "silly
Cold War thriller". Later in 1994, Lundgren appeared in
Perry Lang's
Men of War (scripted by
John Sayles) alongside
Charlotte Lewis and
BD Wong, as Nick Gunar, a former Special Ops soldier who leads a group of mercenaries to a treasure island in the
South China Sea. The film was well received by some critics. One author said "
Men of War invokes the most vividly remembered fighting in a foreign land of recent Western history. This innovation, associating the muscle image with the Vietnam experience, is carried over into other contemporary muscle films." Another said, "fine performances by an all-star Dolph Lundgren as a mercenary assigned to 'convince' a cast in this offbeat and disturbing film." In 1995, Lundgren appeared in
Robert Longo's
Johnny Mnemonic, co-starring
Keanu Reeves. The film portrays screenwriter
William Gibson's
dystopian cyberpunk view of the future with the world dominated by
megacorporations and with strong
East Asian influences. Reeves plays the title character, a man with a
cybernetic brain implant designed to store information. Lundgren plays Karl Honig, a
Jesus-obsessed hitman and street preacher who wears a robe and carries a shepherd's staff. Critical response was negative overall; Roger Ebert said, "Johnny Mnemonic is one of the great gestures of recent cinema, a movie which doesn't deserve one nanosecond of serious analysis." The film was a financial disappointment, grossing $19,075,720 in the domestic American market against its $26m budget. The cloak worn by Lundgren in the film is now located in the lobby of the Famous Players Coliseum in
Mississauga, Ontario, it was his last theatrical release film until 2010. Later in 1995, Lundgren appeared in
Ted Kotcheff's
The Shooter, an action drama in which he plays Michael Dane, a U.S. Marshall who gets caught up in politics when he is hired to solve the assassination of a Cuban ambassador.
1996–2009: Subsequent films and directorial efforts In 1996, Lundgren starred in
Russell Mulcahy's
Silent Trigger, playing a former
Special Forces agent who joins a secretive government agency as an assassin. The Motion Picture Guide to the films of 1997 said, "this stylish but empty thriller gives square-jawed Dolph Lundgren another shot at straight-to-video immortality". The film was praised for its exciting action sequences. Doug Pratt described the first half of the film as "excellent" and described Lundgren's character as "tenacious", although Robert Cettl wrote "the Peacekeeper trades on the presence of B-movie action star Dolph Lundgren, an actor who never became as popular as his action contemporaries Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal." In 1998, he appeared in Jean-Marc Piché's action/
supernatural horror film The Minion alongside
Françoise Robertson Lundgren portrays Lukas Sadorov, a middle eastern templar and member of an order who are charged with guarding the gateway to Hell that, if opened, will unleash all evil. The Video Guide to 2002 said, "that noise you hear isn't the numerous on-screen explosions but action star Lundgren's career hitting rock bottom." He also featured in the
TV pilot Blackjack (directed by
John Woo) as a former US Marshal who becomes the bodyguard and detective of a young supermodel (
Kam Heskin), who becomes the target of a psychotic assassin (Phillip MacKenzie). One review described the narrative as "laughably stupid", while the DVD and Video Guide to 2005 said, "dull, lightweight, made-for-TV action fully to a satisfying climax". In 1999, Lundgren played a mercenary in
Isaac Florentine's
Bridge of Dragons, a military pilot in
Anthony Hickox's
Storm Catcher, and a cop who's a former boxer in
Jill Rips, also directed by Hickox, based on a 1987
novel by Scottish writer
Frederic Lindsay. In 2000, Lundgren starred in
The Last Warrior as Captain Nick Preston under director
Sheldon Lettich. After the film was completed, producer
Andrew Stevens thought it was too poor to be released and multiple people had to be hired to at least make the film half-competent. The film was very poorly received, given its "shoestring budget"; the DVD and Film Guide of 2005 wrote, "low-budget mess stars Dolph Lundgren as a navy special operations commander trying to keep a deadly virus out of the hands of terrorists. This subpar effort sinks to the bottom of the ocean in a tidal wave of cliche." During an interview on
The Tonight Show with
Jay Leno in May 2008,
Gladiator director
Ridley Scott said Lundgren had been considered for the part of undefeated fighter Tigris of Gaul in 2000, but was eventually rejected because "as an actor, he just didn't fit in with what we were trying to achieve". In 2001, Lundgren starred in
Hidden Agenda, directed by Marc S. Grenier. He plays Jason Price, an ex-FBI agent who protects a witness. In 2003, Lundgren featured in
Sidney J. Furie's
Detention. In 2004, Lundgren appeared opposite
Polly Shannon in
Direct Action under
Sidney J. Furie, portraying Sergeant Frank Gannon, an officer who has spent the last three years on the Direct Action Unit (DAU) task force, fighting gang crime and corruption and after he leaves he is hunted down by former colleagues for betraying the brotherhood. That year, he played a role in
Ed Bye's comedy
Fat Slags. His next starring role was in the science fiction picture
Retrograde. In it, Lundgren plays a man who is in a group of genetically unique people who travel back in time to prevent the discovery of meteors containing deadly bacteria." In 2004, Lundgren made his directorial debut with
The Defender, when he replaced
Sidney J. Furie, who was sick during pre-production. Lundgren also stars, playing the bodyguard of the head of the
National Security Agency during a war on terror. In 2005, Lundgren starred and directed his second picture
The Mechanik (a.k.a.
The Russian Specialist), playing a retired Russian Special Forces hitman caught in the crossfire with Russian mobsters.
Sky Movies remarked that
The Mechanik is "hardcore death-dealing from the Nordic leviathan" and said that "
The Mechanik delivers all the no-nonsense gunplay you'd want of a Friday night". In 2006, Lundgren played gladiator Brixos in the Italian-made historical/biblical drama,
The Inquiry (''L'inchiesta
) a remake of a 1986 film by the same name, in an ensemble that includes Daniele Liotti, Mónica Cruz, Max von Sydow, F. Murray Abraham and Ornella Muti. The film, shot on location in Tunisia and Bulgaria, Later in 2007, Lundgren wrote, directed and starred in the modern western film, Missionary Man'' alongside Charles Solomon Jr. Lundgren plays a lone, Bible-preaching stranger named Ryder who comes into a small Texas town on his 1970's
Harley-Davidson motorcycle to attend the funeral of his good friend J.J., a local
Native American carpenter, only to later get mixed up in a series of brawls with a local gang. According to Lundgren, it had long been a desire of his to direct a western, having long been a fan of
Clint Eastwood and
John Wayne, yet he did not want to spend the time and money building an old western town and hiring horses, so decided to set it in modern times with a motorbike. In 2008, Lundgren starred in the direct-to-video action flick
Direct Contact. He plays an ex-US
Special forces operative on a rescue mission. This was followed by another direct to video film
Command Performance (2009), a hostage action drama in which Lundgren, a proficient musician in real life, plays a rock drummer forced to face terrorists at a concert. The film co-starred Canadian pop singer
Melissa Smith, playing a world-famous pop singer in the film and his own daughter, Ida, on her screen debut, who played one of the daughters of the Russian president. The story was inspired by a concert
Madonna put on for Russian President
Vladimir Putin, although Lundgren has also likened the pop singer to
Britney Spears. In 2009, The Dolph Lundgren Scholarship was instituted in his name, which is awarded to the student with the best grades at Ådalsskolan in
Kramfors, the school where he himself studied. Lundgren then reunited with Jean-Claude Van Damme in
Universal Soldier: Regeneration, where he plays Andrew Scott's clone. The film was released theatrically in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and directly to video in the United States and other parts of the world. Since its release, the film has received better than average reviews for a straight-to-DVD franchise sequel, with film critic Brian Orndorf giving the film a B, calling it "moody, pleasingly quick-draw, and knows when to quit, making the
Universal Soldier brand name bizarrely vital once again."
Dread Central gave it three out of five knives, saying: "there is almost nothing but solid b-level action until the credits roll." On the negative side, Pablo Villaça said in his review that while he praised Van Damme's performance, he criticized that of Lundgren and described the film "dull in concept and execution". Later in 2009, Lundgren directed and starred as a businessman whose shady past as a KGB special agent is discovered in the hit-man thriller
Icarus (retitled in the US and the UK as
The Killing Machine).
2010–present: Return to prominence and current projects '' at ComicCon 2010 In 2010, Lundgren made a guest star appearance on the TV series
Chuck in the fourth-season premiere episode, "
Chuck Versus the Anniversary", as Russian spy Marco, with references to
Rocky IV's Ivan Drago. He then played a drug-addled assassin in the ensemble action film
The Expendables, in a cast which includes popular action stars such as Stallone,
Jason Statham,
Jet Li, and
Randy Couture as a group of elite mercenaries, tasked with a mission to overthrow a Latin American dictator. It was described by Lundgren as "an old-school, kick-ass action movie where people are fighting with knives and shooting at each other." The film received mixed reviews from critics but was very successful commercially, opening at number one at the box office in the United States, the United Kingdom China and India. Lundgren was one of three hosts for the 2010
Melodifestivalen, where the Swedish contribution to the
Eurovision Song Contest is selected. In the first installation on 6 February, Lundgren co-hosted the competition together with comedian
Christine Meltzer and performer
Måns Zelmerlöw. Lundgren's appearance was hailed by critics and audience, particularly his rendition of
Elvis Presley's "
A Little Less Conversation". Lundgren played the lead role in
Uwe Boll's
In the Name of the King 2: Two Worlds, and had supporting roles in
Jonas Åkerlund's
Small Apartments and a thriller called
Stash House. Principal photography for
Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning began on 9 May 2011 in Louisiana, and filming wrapped on
One in the Chamber (co-starring
Cuba Gooding Jr.) around the same time.
The Expendables 2 entered principal photography in late September/early October 2011, with Lundgren reprising his role as Gunner Jensen. Filming wrapped in January 2012, and it was released by Lionsgate on 17 August later that year. He starred in a number of other films later that year, including
Legendary,
Battle of the Damned,
Ambushed, and
Blood of Redemption. In 2014, Lundgren co-starred opposite
Cung Le in the action film
Puncture Wounds, and reprised his role as Gunner Jensen for the third time in
The Expendables 3. He then wrote, produced, and starred alongside
Tony Jaa and
Ron Perlman in
Skin Trade, an action thriller about human trafficking. Principal photography started on 2 February 2014 in
Thailand, and wrapped in
Vancouver; April the same year. The film received a limited theatrical release, followed by a Blu-ray and DVD release on 25 August 2015. In February, he filmed a cameo for the
Coen brothers' 2016 comedy film
Hail, Caesar!, portraying a Soviet submarine captain. at the 2015 annual
Gumball 3000 event in Stockholm, Sweden On 21 January 2015, Lundgren started filming straight-to-video film
Shark Lake on the
Mississippi Gulf Coast. This was followed by a further six weeks of filming in the "Reno-Tahoe area". In the film, he portrays Clint Gray, a black-market dealer of exotic species responsible for releasing a dangerous shark into
Lake Tahoe. Directed by Jerry Dugan, the film's budget was $2 million. He portrays Agent Reed, a law enforcement officer who must go undercover as a kindergarten teacher, in order to recover a missing flash drive from the
Federal Witness Protection Program. Throughout that year, he starred in a number of other straight-to-video films, including the crime thriller
The Good, the Bad and the Dead and the prison film
Riot. He starred in the music video of
Imagine Dragons's
Believer, which was released on 7 March 2017. In August 2017, he portrayed the future version of Gil Shepard in the
Syfy film
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming. In 2018,
Black Water, an
action thriller, directed by
Pasha Patriki was released. Also starred Van Damme, this was their fifth collaboration between both actors as well as the first time they appear together as on-screen allies. Lundgren reprised his role of Ivan Drago from
Rocky IV in
Creed II, the 2018 sequel to
Creed. He played an older, impoverished Drago in the film, which also introduces the character's son, Viktor. This marked the beginning of what
New York has described as Lundgren's "comeback." Also that year, Lundgren appeared in the
DC Extended Universe film
Aquaman, from director
James Wan, as the underwater king
Nereus. Later in 2021, Lundgren starred and directed in the 2021 action film
Castle Falls as Richard Ericson, in his first feature film as directed in nearly 12 years. In 2022, Lundgren starred in a series of
Old Spice advertisements (via
deepfakes) to promote a new
antiperspirant line of deodorant spray. The advertisements depicted the 65 year old actor as a young adult doing an "80s action movie spoof." He would later appear in
FanDuel's "Powerful Hunch" campaign. ==Training and diet==