Life's A Fight. Don’t Let It Break You: Dolph Lundgren On Trauma, Stardom & Cancer

Dolph Lundgren (0:00)

He said, yeah, you probably have about three years left, but I can't believe that I was that close to dying.

Rich Roll (0:06)

Dolph Lundgren, one of Hollywood's best known action heroes. Up there with the most iconic action stars of the 1980s. There's no one like him, period, end of story.

Dolph Lundgren (0:15)

I wanted to get away from my dad, and he kind of kicked me and I flew into some hook shelf and hit my head and I was bleeding. I could hijack this feeling to play an action character. What if I make it like the ultimate lab creation? I must break you, I must break you.

It turned out to be kidney cancer. This guy says it's over, but what about, let me try this person. I found out later that those are the wrong drugs. I was misdiagnosed. Within four weeks, everything was shrinking. Your job as a man is to be in the red, to give more than you were given, to love more than you were loved.

Maybe it came back to me from the universe, and that's why I was given a second chance.

Rich Roll (1:02)

You know, I thought I knew who you were, and then getting into your book and learning as much as I could about your life and the high highs and the low lows and this kind of Odysseus-like journey that you've been on, it's really remarkable and it's so rich in its texture in terms of kind of what you've weathered and endured to really, you know, again, in the spirit of Odysseus to like return home to yourself, you know? It's a very, it's a very human story. And it's really a story of trauma and healing fundamentally.

You know, this reconciliation between, you know, Hans, this young child growing up in a small town, you know, in Sweden and suffering, you know, suffering the abuse that you suffered, then armoring yourself in, you know, the Drago costume and being this indestructible, you know, action hero who was just impenetrable in this immovable object, right? Stoic to the core, but not impenetrable to, you know, the kind of trauma that was unhealed. And that powered you to great heights, but ultimately, you know, our strengths become our Achilles heel and like reckoning with that, you know, really become this integrated human being. Like it is a hero's journey. The humble beginnings to, you know, stardom to the low moments, you know, it lends itself to a perfect three act structure.

Dolph Lundgren (2:37)

Yeah, slaying of the father, meeting the sorcerers, you know, traveling far away lands, near-death experience. There are all these steps on the road that I now have.

Rich Roll (2:52)

The sirens.

Dolph Lundgren (2:53)

The sirens. Oh yeah. Studio 54, the sirens.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's, it was well thought out by Campbell when he kind of mapped that out because it's true for everybody, but I think some is a little more palpable than for others, I guess.

Rich Roll (3:13)

Your greatest role is playing yourself in the movie of your life. Like this is the movie that needs to be in development. Like reading your book, there were so many stories that you tell where I could just see it. I mean, when you get this Fulbright scholarship to get your PhD in chemical engineering at MIT and you're pulling up to MIT on a motorcycle in a suit made out of leather and rubber designed by Versace and you have Grace Jones on the back and you climb off that motorcycle to go into this storied institution of geeks and brainiacs. I mean, I just like that is the most cinematic thing. I can just see it, like the contrast of the collision of these two worlds.

Dolph Lundgren (4:04)

Collisions. Yeah, it was an internal collision for me too, because I wanted to satisfy my dad and that was his favorite school, MIT and he was an engineer as well. I wanted to also deliver on all those years of studying I'd put in.

But then I knew on a deep level that it wasn't really for me. I had a different destiny, something waiting for me. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that I had to make a decision. Because if I had started and kind of focused on the PhD, that would have been it then. I mean, somebody else would have played Ivan Drago.

Rich Roll (4:49)

Yeah. A lot of people, well, not a lot, but a certain amount of people could attend MIT and get their PhD and go work on the space shuttle, which I know you did when you were at Clemson for a period of time. But there's only one guy who's got Grace Jones on the back of his motorcycle. At a very specific time in history where culture was popping off in New York City in the way that it was, I have a very romantic relationship and yearning. I feel like I was born a little bit too late. I wish that I was at Studio 54 during that time and navigating Warhol's inner circle at the factory. And all of these experiences that you've had, I probably would have died if that happened.