Dolph Lundgren
Dolph Lundgren ( born November 3, 1957 in Stockholm as Hans Lundgren ) is a Swedish Kyokushin champion as well as an actor and director of action movies.
Life
Early years
Dolph Lundgren was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of the engineer Karl Johan Hugo Lundgren and the language teacher Sigrid Birgitta (born Tjerneld ) on November 3, 1957, grew up together with two sisters and a brother in Spånga - Tensta district. Spent his youth Lundgren with his grandparents in Nyland outside Kramfors.
He attended the Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, where he graduated as a chemical engineer. There followed several stays abroad. Lundgren received guest scholarships for Washington State University, Clemson University in South Carolina in 1982 and a scholarship to the University of Sydney, where he attained his Masters degree in Chemical Engineering. The following year, he received a Fulbright scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. After studying 1,95 meter Lundgren worked in New York City as a bouncer at the nightclub The Limelight, where he met the actress and singer Grace Jones. They hired the Sweden as a bodyguard and a little later the two began a relationship. In 1985, Grace Jones Lundgren helped to a small appearance in the film James Bond 007 - In the face of death.
Sporting successes
In his youth Lundgren Hockey played and started at the age of sixteen with judo. A year later he moved to karate, in his own words to a greater physical distance from the opponent to have. First, he held the traditional style of Goju - Ryu before he shifted his focus to training Kyokushin Kaikan harder. 1979 took Lundgren, then only the carrier of the green belt, the second World Open Karate Tournament in Tokyo part.
At the beginning of the 1980s, his winning streak began in Kyokushin Karate: Lundgren won both 1980 and 1981, the British Open in the heavyweight class in 1982 was followed by a victory at the Australian Open. During his studies in Sydney Lundgren also have a private karate club and worked together with his best friend, another karate student, as a security guard at concerts.
Dolph Lundgren trained regularly over the years with his friend and teacher Shihan Brian Fitkin, reaching in 1998 during a test in his former dojo in Stockholm the third Dan. In addition, he has participated in three World Cups and also dedicated himself to his adopted home of Spain for Kyokushin Karate.
On June 10, 2007, he competed in a boxing match against Russia in the mixed martial arts fighters in the Ultimate Fighting Championship Oleg Taktarov. Taktarov won the five- round fight just on points.
Career in film
Lundgren applied in 1985 for the role of the Soviet boxer Ivan Drago (Russian: Иван Драго ) in the movie Rocky IV - The battle of the century and was initially rejected. Only when he sent a photo of the director and star Sylvester Stallone to apply personally, he received the promise. During the filming of the boxing match Stallone injured his head and chest and had to be rushed to the emergency room after he was hit hard by Lundgren several times. The martial appearance helped him gain new popularity as a movie star and the figure of Ivan Drago enjoys in fan circles of the Rocky franchises still very popular.
In the following years, he starred in several action movies, starting with the lead role as He-Man in Masters of the Universe. In Red Scorpion Lundgren portrayed a Soviet special agents. There were other films that received higher age ratings due to its explicit depictions of violence or have been indexed, such as The Punisher, Dark Angel or Showdown in Little Tokyo. Another success was Lundgren's appearance as a reanimated soldier Andrew Scott in the movie Universal Soldier directed by Roland Emmerich.
In the course of the 1990s, followed by numerous other action films such as Silent Trigger and The Sweeper - Landmines, which received mostly negative reviews and are classified today as " B- Movies". In the new millennium Lundgren played directed by Sidney J. Furie in Detention - The lesson is called survival! and direct action. Moreover, he himself led from 2004 to 2010 for a total of six films directed and each also played the lead role himself. These were mostly released directly on DVD.
2010 worked with Lundgren co-hosted at Melodifestivalen, the Swedish preselection for the Euro Vision Song Contest.
Since the same year he played the role of mentally unstable mercenary Gunnar Jensen in Sylvester Stallone's Expendables franchise. The first part of The Expendables helped him to make a comeback as a theater performer alongside Jet Li and Jason Statham. 2012 was followed by The Expendables 2 in which Lundgren as Jensen makes several references to his real life.
In Battle of the Damned from 2013, he first took a role in a zombie movie.
In the German dubbed versions it is mainly spoken by Manfred Lehmann.
Others
Lundgren speaks Swedish and English, and also has knowledge of German, Spanish, Japanese and French.
After relationships with singer Grace Jones and model Paula Barbieri in the 1980s, married Dolph Lundgren 1994, the designer Anette Qviberg, with whom he has two daughters. The family lived for twelve years in Marbella in Spain. Meanwhile Lundgren and Qviberg are separated.
Lundgren is the author of the fitness manual Fit Forever, which was released in Sweden.
Dolph Lundgren - scholarship
In 2009, a " Dolph Lundgren - scholarship " was introduced at Lundgren's former high school in Kramfors. The scholarship of 25 000 SEK will be awarded to students with good qualifications. Lundgren himself went down in the annals of Ådalsskolan when he graduated from high school as the first student with the highest score so far.