Rich RollDolph Lundgren’s Cancer Was Misdiagnosed. A Second Opinion Saved His Life.
Rich Roll
An Action Icon's Real Story 0:00
Dolph Lundgren is introduced as one of Hollywood's defining 1980s action stars, but the conversation quickly moves past the tough-guy image. He mentions being misdiagnosed with cancer and later saved by a second opinion, and he describes his life as a story of trauma and healing rather than simple stardom. The host frames it as a hero's journey, moving from a difficult childhood in Sweden to the armored, invincible persona of characters like Ivan Drago, and finally toward reckoning with the wounds that persona was covering.
Leaving MIT for a Different Destiny 3:31
Lundgren had earned a Fulbright scholarship to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering at MIT, following in his engineer father's footsteps. He recalls arriving on a motorcycle in a leather and rubber suit designed by Versace, with Grace Jones riding behind him. Despite wanting to satisfy his father and honor his years of study, he felt on a deep level that engineering was not his path, and he made the decision to walk away before starting the PhD, knowing that if he had begun it, he would never have left.
Sober Nights in Early 1980s Manhattan 6:00
Lundgren describes arriving in New York around 1982 and living in the West Village near the meatpacking district, when Manhattan still felt gritty and had not yet gone corporate. He ran every morning at five, sometimes down to the World Trade Center and back through a rough, pre-gentrified Tribeca. At Studio 54 he stood out as completely sober while everyone around him was on cocaine, and he says he did not try drugs himself until well after he became famous.
Landing the Role of Ivan Drago 8:32
About a year after quitting MIT and starting to act, Lundgren was turned away from a Rocky IV casting call for being too tall. Through his acting coach he arranged a meeting with John Herzfeld, a friend of Sylvester Stallone, and eventually got his photo to Stallone directly. Stallone later told him the character had originally been imagined as a hairy Russian bear, but seeing Lundgren gave him the idea of a chemically engineered, perfect specimen to contrast with Rocky's imperfect American fighter. Lundgren trained for six months for the role.
Playing Drago With Stillness 12:32
Lundgren's acting coach Warren Robertson, who had studied with Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe, noticed that other actors auditioning for Drago played the character loudly and aggressively. He advised Lundgren instead to stay physically still and deliver the lines internally, imagining Drago as a soldier forced by the Soviet state to fight, saying his lines almost against his will. That quiet, internal approach, paired with Lundgren's genuine background as a European kickboxing and karate champion, is what won him the part.
Childhood Abuse in Sweden 16:30
Lundgren describes growing up in an upper-middle-class Swedish home where his father, an army officer and engineer, was physically abusive, starting when Lundgren was about three years old. He recounts being kicked into a bookshelf and left bleeding while his mother screamed, and says the abuse continued for years with no hotlines or way out for a child in the 1960s. He connects this to a freeze response, a third survival reaction beyond fight or flight, comparing it to a gazelle going limp once caught by a lion, and says this same disassociation later became a tool that let him endure pain as a martial artist and stunt performer, even as it also fueled destructive behavior like reckless stunts and drinking.
Escaping a Small Town 28:01
Lundgren says his drive came partly from his father and partly from an early sense that life was short and that staying in his small Swedish town would mean an unhappy life like his father's. Before earning a scholarship to study chemistry in Washington state at eighteen, he went through a rebellious phase of stealing and sniffing glue, which led to an intervention and time at his grandfather's house, where he found alternative father figures and began taking academics and martial arts more seriously. He notes that going to America let him become a different person to people who did not know his past, and that the pull toward a bigger life grew gradually through karate, modeling, and eventually meeting Grace Jones.
Forgiveness Toward His Father 30:31
Dolph reflects on why his father may have pushed him out of the house, suggesting it came from a subconscious mix of compassion and self-preservation. He notes that many friends from his troubled teenage years, marked by drinking and glue-sniffing, did not survive, and leaving home likely saved his life. By the time he had grown stronger than his father, he chose not to seek revenge, since martial arts taught him that beating someone up for old wounds was not the answer.
Proving Himself To His Father 32:00
Dolph explains that much of his early ambition, winning the European karate championship twice in 1980 and 1981, earning a chemical engineering degree, and later a Fulbright scholarship to MIT, was driven by a need to prove his father wrong. His father, who had once wanted to study in Germany and dreamed of America but never had the means, eventually softened and expressed pride, especially after the championships and the MIT acceptance. By then the two were on friendlier terms, with the old animosity fading.
His Father's Tragic Decline 34:00
Dolph describes his parents divorcing without telling the children, an event tied to his father's early retirement after an outburst at work and to money his mother had inherited from her family, including her father, an inventor of old radio gramophones. His father eventually developed serious mental illness, possibly bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, covering his windows in foil and refusing medication. He died in a London mental hospital, a lonely man whom Dolph visited a few times near the end of his life.
Breaking The Cycle Of Trauma 36:01
The conversation turns to healing and generational trauma, with Dolph agreeing that his father lacked the strength to transform his pain the way Dolph has tried to. He recalls old photographs of his father as a sensitive-looking child in a sailor suit, likely mistreated by his own father, a tough army officer from a poor family of twelve siblings who lost his mother at twelve. Dolph acknowledges his own daughters carry their own trauma from his acting career and divorce, insisting there is no way to compare one person's pain to another's.
Special Forces And Physical Limits 40:00
Drafted into Swedish coastal artillery during the Cold War, Dolph later volunteered for a Navy Seal-style selection course that only about twenty percent of candidates completed. During the training he first injured his ankle, an injury he had surgery on decades later, but he kept going by tightening his boots and pushing through a day and a half in freezing conditions. He describes this as entering a different mental zone, a shift he compares to a hidden, more aggressive side emerging under extreme physical stress, one he watches almost from the outside.
The Duality Of Warrior And Artist 43:31
Dolph describes himself as naturally shy, anxious, and artistic, contrasting sharply with his imposing physical presence, a dissonance he compares to actors like Sylvester Stallone and old-school stars such as Robert Mitchum, who combined toughness with hidden sensitivity. He believes audiences sense this hidden depth on screen, even in violent characters, citing Robert De Niro as an example of an actor whose humanity shows through even in brutal scenes. Dolph credits acting with giving him an outlet for both sides of his personality, joking that otherwise he might have ended up an alcoholic chemical engineer with failed marriages.
Meeting Grace Jones 46:30
Working as a nightclub doorman in Sydney while pursuing his chemical engineering degree, Dolph kickboxed an unruly patron, which led to being hired as security for Grace Jones. Standing outside her dressing room, he caught her attention, and after a night out with her entourage gradually thinning to just the two of them, he ended up spending the night with her. He admits feeling shocked and undeserving, describing himself as sexually inexperienced at the time despite his imposing physique.
From Sydney To New York 52:00
After meeting Grace in April and winning the Australian Open in karate, Dolph reunited with her in Tokyo, where she was filming a Honda commercial, then followed her to New York during a gap semester before he was due to start at MIT. That New York period, filled with encounters tied to Andy Warhol, Studio 54, and the era's cultural scene, ultimately led him to abandon MIT nine months later in favor of pursuing acting.
Studying Acting With Warden Robertson 54:00
Dolph began studying with acting coach Warden Robertson, who also trained Grace Jones for Conan the Destroyer, and who quickly sensed Dolph's unresolved trauma with his father. During an exercise built around a scene from On the Waterfront, Robertson had Dolph confront his emotions about his father before performing, producing a breakthrough that left Dolph feeling emotionally lighter and made him consider that he might be more suited to art than engineering. He recalls that Grace herself began to see him differently once people started noticing him at events, not just as her companion but as someone with his own presence.
Landing Rocky IV 57:00
Dolph's connections through Grace's agent led to auditions for two different Sylvester Stallone projects, one being Rambo: First Blood Part II and the other a boxing film that turned out to be Rocky IV. After being cast in Rocky IV, he was paid off for the Rambo role, a sum of about five thousand dollars that felt significant to him at the time. He reflects that acting allowed him to compartmentalize and later draw on his childhood pain as a tool for performance, wondering what might have happened had he pursued serious dramatic training for years rather than landing a major role so quickly. Stallone reportedly remarked that Dolph was almost too physically perfect for the role, predicting audiences would resent him for it.
Training for Rocky Four and Bonding with Stallone 1:01:00
Dolph describes training intensely for Rocky Four, comparing it to a real-life training montage. The role marked the start of an unusual four-decade relationship with Sylvester Stallone, one that mixed closeness and friendship with competitiveness and occasional conflict. Over the years the two ended up making six films together, something Dolph says is rare in the business even for Stallone, who has not had that kind of long-term connection with many other collaborators.
The Night Everything Changed 1:02:30
Dolph recalls the Rocky Four premiere in Westwood in November 1985, arriving at the theater still known mainly as Grace Jones's boyfriend rather than as an actor. He had not seen the finished film and was stunned watching it, especially the powerful close-up cinematography by Bill Butler and the film's Cold War tension, which felt real to audiences worried about nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union. Walking out to photographers and press afterward, he felt disoriented and almost ill, sensing that fame was about to complicate his life. He reflects that sudden fame at a young age can freeze a person's emotional development, comparing it to how addiction recovery can leave someone emotionally stuck at the age they started using.
A Different Path Than Arnold and Sly 1:08:00
Unlike Schwarzenegger, who had a driven master plan from bodybuilding to movie stardom to politics, and Stallone, who approached acting as a writer and artist, Dolph says he stumbled into fame without direction, having been a student at MIT just years earlier. He admits he received poor career advice from managers and lacked focus on his craft or projects, which contributed to his career petering out a few years after Rocky Four once he no longer had Stallone or MGM behind him.
Trauma Surfacing Through Escape Behavior 1:11:30
As fame faded into a harder daily existence, Dolph says his childhood trauma began surfacing through partying, risky stunt work, and other escape behaviors, a pattern he compares to a soldier turning to drinking or violence to avoid dealing with what's inside. His mother's death in 1992, when she was only 60, hit him hard, and he says he sought a replacement for her by getting engaged to a Swedish woman, eventually relocating with her to Europe. He believes this move may have protected him from self-destructing had he stayed immersed in Hollywood's excesses during that period.
Opening Up on Swedish Radio 1:19:00
Years later, while hosting a Swedish radio program, a producer encouraged him to talk about his father, and Dolph ended up recounting his difficult upbringing publicly for the first time, growing emotional in the process. The disclosure transformed his public image in Sweden, turning him from an outsider figure into someone embraced by the country. He says being honest, rather than performing a rehearsed persona, felt more powerful and connected him to audiences in a way his tough-guy film roles never allowed him to express.
Return to Hollywood and Cancer Diagnosis 1:26:00
After financial strain and divorce, Dolph moved back to Los Angeles around 2010, and Stallone's call for The Expendables relaunched his career. Around this time he also began therapy and meditation, prompted partly by a relationship in which he recognized his own destructive patterns. In 2015, while training in Sweden, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer after noticing blood in his urine, but kept it private from almost everyone except his daughters and close friends, fearing it would hurt his career. He continued working intensely, doing his own stunts in films like Aquaman and Creed 2 while still using steroids and HGH, substances that can promote tumor growth, describing that decade as one where he did not know how to slow down.
Steroid Use and Its Risks 1:32:01
Dolph explains that he used steroids on and off starting in his thirties, drawn by faster recovery and bigger muscles, without thinking about consequences at that age. After his first cancer scare, he admits he went back to them out of fear of feeling weak. He also notes that newer wellness and longevity drugs are largely untested over the long term, so no one really knows their effects decades from now.
A Second Tumor During COVID 1:33:01
In 2020, while sheltering in Sweden during the pandemic, Dolph began feeling ill again and a scan revealed six new tumors in the same area as before. This happened the same week he had planned to propose to his now-wife Emma, so he went ahead with the engagement despite the frightening diagnosis. He later had surgery again, but the cancer had spread further, growing too large to remove, so doctors put him on immunotherapy, which brought painful side effects including blood clots that required blood thinners.
Misdiagnosed and Nearly Out of Options 1:36:00
Months of immunotherapy turned out to be the wrong treatment entirely, because his cancer was a specific mutation that had never been properly analyzed at the cellular level. A doctor in London told him he likely had about three years left, and Dolph assumed the real number was even lower. Even so, he kept working, shooting Aquaman and Expendables 4 in London, and describes feeling strangely unafraid, as if some fatalistic resolve took over rather than depression.
The Second Opinion That Changed Everything 1:38:02
Someone suggested a doctor at UCLA, and although Dolph doubted it would lead anywhere, he sent over his charts. That doctor immediately recognized the treatment made no sense for his specific, unusual type of kidney cancer and identified five other medications that could actually target it. Within four weeks of starting the new drug, his tumors began shrinking, and he was well enough to keep directing another film. He calls it hard to believe how close he came to dying and how quickly one new perspective turned everything around.
Meaning, Self-Love, and Legacy 1:41:32
Reflecting on what the experience taught him, Dolph says he believes everyone has a reason for being here, and his has been about sharing experience with others. He describes practicing self-love literally, looking in the mirror and telling himself he loves himself, something that felt hard and hollow at first. He references Louise Hay's affirmations and her line about being the treasure one has been seeking, and quotes Solzhenitsyn on the line between good and evil running through every heart, tying his outlook to Viking sayings about how one is remembered after death.
Advice for Young Men and Closing Reflections 1:45:30
Asked about young men searching for meaning amid loneliness and harmful online influences, Dolph says loving yourself has to come before loving others, and that strength without self-love can be turned to negative purposes. He says material success, fame, and beauty are fine to enjoy but empty if used to fill an inner void, and repeats an idea about living in the red, giving more than you received. He closes by saying that if he could speak to himself as a boy being mistreated by his father, he would tell him it's going to be fine and offer him a hug, something he says he now tries to give himself daily through his affirmations.
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