'Ultimate challenge': Dolph Lundgren on cancer battle that nearly claimed his life

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Dolph Lundgren has faced plenty of battles onscreen and off. But when he was diagnosed with cancer for a second time in 2020 and told that he might have only a few years to live, he was in for the fight of his life.

“The cancer battle has been tough because it’s the ultimate challenge,” Lundgren, 68, says in an interview with Postmedia.

Lundgren was first diagnosed with the disease in 2015. After undergoing a successful operation, he was declared cancer-free, but his cancer returned five years later.

The sudden life-threatening turn is captured in Dolph: Unbreakable, a new documentary that chronicles Lundgren’s 40-plus years in front of the camera.

“It’s a therapeutic exercise when you’re doing a documentary,” Lundgren says. “You look back at your life … It was an opportunity to appreciate what this Swedish kid accomplished.”

But being told he might not have long to live made him confront his own mortality.

Encouraged by his wife Emma Krokdal, 30, the Swiss actor sought a second opinion. That decision helped save his life.

“Emma was there through all these struggles. She’s younger than me, and young people are more optimistic. They see the positive side of life more and that was great for me,” he says.

When Dr. Alexandra Drakaki took new tests in 2022, Lundgren learned he had been misdiagnosed.

“She was the one that figured everything out,” the father of two says.

Dr. Drakaki put Lundgren on a new course of treatment that led to him becoming cancer-free in 2024.

“There were drugs that work against (the type of cancer) I had. Dr. Drakaki immediately said, ‘There are five drugs you can take that can cure it,'” he recalls.

Lundgren briefly thought about suing the doctors who made the original medical error, but decided against it.

“I had a moment of disappointment and anger and I thought about filing a lawsuit and winning some money and donating it to cancer research. I talked to a lawyer, but it was just wasted energy, really. It would have been a negative experience,” he says.

Since being declared cancer-free in 2024, Lundgren has taken part in survivorship therapy, and the experience has taught him that even if the disease hadn’t affected his life, he needed a change of pace.

“I spoke to my survivorship therapist and (they told me) if I hadn’t gotten cancer, I would have kept going at a thousand miles an hour with workouts, travelling, working, drinking a little too much, steroids and crazy stunts. It was a lifestyle that could have killed me anyway,” he says.

‘I’m very good friends with Sly’

In addition to recounting his harrowing battle with cancer, Dolph: Unbreakable delves into Lundgren’s career-making role as Ivan Drago opposite Sylvester Stallone in 1985’s Rocky IV.

Lundgren fell in love with acting when he took a class during a trip to New York City with then-girlfriend Grace Jones as she was in the midst of prepping for her role opposite Roger Moore in 1985’s A View to a Kill.

With a black belt in Kyokushin karate, he already had a degree in chemical engineering and had been awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to MIT.

But acting unlocked “something emotional,” Lundgren says.

“I realized I really liked the arts better than engineering and fighting,” he says. “I was able to find a role in Ivan Drago where I was able to combine the arts and fighting and that’s the way life worked. It was the right place at the right time.”

Lundgren recalls how he heard Francis Ford Coppola say that a film’s worth isn’t decided by its box office, but by its timelessness.

“Rocky IV happens to be one of those films and I was lucky to be a part of it,” he says.

Stallone appears in Dolph: Unbreakable, and Lundgren credits the actor for not only his big break, but his career resurrection with the Expendables franchise in 2010 and again in a 2018 sequel to the Rocky spinoff Creed.

He says the two share a background of childhood abuse and their staying power in Hollywood.

“Of course, how many guys have done a hundred action movies with all the injuries and the fame and the ups and downs — there aren’t that many guys you can talk to that get it,” Lundgren says.

The two had a brief falling out over a proposed Drago spinoff in 2022, but Lundgren says he and Stallone have reconnected.

“He just texted me yesterday about the doc. He was moved by it,” Lundgren says. “He’s a tough guy to please because he’s a perfectionist. I thought that was nice to hear.”

Like Stallone, Lundgren continues to stay busy — in addition to the doc he has recently released a new memoir. But surviving cancer left him with a new perspective.

“For sure. Your mind goes there. It’s like a negative feedback loop,” he says, reflecting on the cancer battle that nearly claimed his life. “You have to learn how to breathe and go, ‘The last scan was great.’ … You face your own mortality, but if you make it through, it changes you … it makes you appreciate life more.”

Dolph: Unbreakable is available to watch on demand on Super Channel.

mdaniell@postmedia.com