Age, Biography, and Wiki
Dolph Lundgren was born on November 3, 1957, making him 67 years old as of 2024. Born as Hans Lundgren, he is a Swedish-American actor, director, and martial artist. Lundgren's career spans multiple genres, from action films to martial arts tournaments. His Wikipedia page provides a comprehensive overview of his life and career: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolph_Lundgren.
| Occupation | Martial Artist |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 3 November 1957 |
| Age | 67 Years |
| Birth Place | Spånga, Stockholm County, Sweden |
| Horoscope | Scorpio |
| Country | Sweden |
Height, Weight & Measurements
- Height: 6 feet 5 inches (196 cm)
- Weight: Approximately 250 lbs (113 kg)
- Dolph Lundgren is known for his towering physique, which has been a defining feature throughout his acting and martial arts career.
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."
When in Los Angeles, he trains at the Equinox Gym in Westwood and previously at home in Marbella, Spain, he trained at the Qi Sport Gym in Puerto Banús. Lundgren also spars and practices karate aside from weight lifting. He cites dead lifting and squats as the best exercises for muscle building. Lundgren is not a heavy drinker, but has professed on many occasions to being fond of tequila and cocktails, citing his knowledge in chemical engineering as "making really good drinks".
| Height | 6 feet 5 inches |
| Weight | 250 lbs |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Dolph Lundgren has been married to Anette Qviberg since 1994. The couple has two daughters together. Lundgren was previously in a relationship with Jamaican singer Grace Jones, whom he met while working as her bodyguard in the early 1980s.
He lived in Spånga until the age of 13, when he moved to his grandparents' home in Nyland, Ångermanland. Some sources wrongly state 1959 as his year of birth, but Lundgren himself has confirmed it to be 1957. He has two sisters, Katarina and Annika and an elder brother Johan. Lundgren claims his father was physically abusive and took out his own personal frustrations on his wife and son. He has stated that, during his tirades, his father would call him a "loser", which motivated him later as he grew more ambitious to prove himself. But he also said, "I still love my father, no matter what happened. There are many things about him I still admire. As a child, I was probably too much like him, very stubborn—perhaps that's what he couldn't deal with." He has cited his troubled relationship with his father as the reason he developed a desire to participate in heavy contact sports such as boxing and karate.
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 240 lb during filming, but in the film he was billed at 260 lb, one shipping above of Drago, "He's a exceptional 250 lb of merciless fighting machine, Drago is listed come to behold 270 lb, the best that Soviet science & medicine can create". 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."
In 2000, Lundgren starred in The Last Warrior as Captain Nick Preston under director Sheldon Lettich. In Damian Lee's Agent Red (also known as Captured), co-starring Alexander Kuznetsov and Natalie Radford and Randolph Mantooth, Lundgren plays a soldier trapped on a submarine during the Cold War who must work with his wife, a virologist, to prevent a terrorist chemical attack against the United States. 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 1994, he married Anette Qviberg (b. 1966), a jewellery designer and fashion stylist, in Marbella. The couple decided they liked Marbella so much that they rented accommodations there for years, before eventually buying a family home there. They have two daughters: Ida Sigrid Lundgren (b. 1996) and Greta Eveline Lundgren (b. 2001), both born in Stockholm. Lundgren and Qviberg cited the reason for living outside Hollywood was to give their children as normal a childhood as possible. In early May 2009, three masked burglars reportedly broke into Lundgren's Marbella home. The burglars tied up and threatened his wife, but fled when they found a family photo and realized that the house was owned by Lundgren. Lundgren later stated he believed the intruders to be Eastern European and had asked contacts in Bulgaria to investigate them, but to no avail. After the incident, Lundgren's elder daughter, Ida, suffered from PTSD. His wife was the "most traumatized." He and his wife divorced in 2011.
Lundgren was in a relationship with Jenny Sandersson from 2011 to 2017. Lundgren became engaged to Norwegian personal trainer Emma Krokdal, nearly 40 years his junior, in June 2020. They married at their villa in Mykonos on July 13, 2023.
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| Husband | Anette Qviberg (m. 1994-2011) Emma Krokdal (m. 13 July 2023) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Dolph Lundgren's net worth is estimated to be $18 million, primarily derived from his successful acting career, filmmaking ventures, and martial arts endeavors. His salary varies per project, but notable roles like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and Gunner Jensen in The Expendables have significantly contributed to his earnings.
Career, Business, and Investments
- Early Career: Lundgren's breakthrough role came in 1985 as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. He has since appeared in numerous films, including Masters of the Universe, Universal Soldier, and Aquaman.
- Recent Projects: Lundgren has been involved in directing and producing several films, including Wanted Man. He also launched an alcohol brand named Hard Cut Vodka.
- Martial Arts: Lundgren holds a fourth-dan black belt in karate and has been the European champion in Kyokushin Karate. He leverages his martial arts expertise through instructional DVDs and public appearances.
- Business Ventures: Lundgren's entrepreneurial ventures include alcohol branding and investments in real estate and entertainment projects.
Amidst his years of studying, Lundgren honed his karate skills by training in a dojo for five years, and attained a black belt in Kyokushin by the late 1970s. He captained the Swedish Kyokushin karate team, and was a challenger at the 1979 World Open Tournament (arranged by the Kyokushin Karate Organization). He won the European championships in 1980 and 1981, and a full-contact karate tournament in Australia in 1982. In 1982, Lundgren graduated with a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney. During his time in Sydney, he earned a living as a bouncer in a nightclub in the notorious King's Cross area.
Lundgren was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to MIT in 1983. However, while preparing for the move to Boston, he was spotted in the nightclub where he worked in Sydney and was hired by Grace Jones as a bodyguard, and the two became lovers. He moved with Jones to New York City, where he dabbled in modeling at the Zoli Agency but was described as "a bit too tall and muscular for a model's size 40". He earned a living as a bouncer at the Manhattan nightclub The Limelight, which was housed in the former Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion, working with Chazz Palminteri. In the daytime, he studied drama at the Warren Robertson Theatre Workshop and has said that "my time in New York City opened up my adolescent Swedish eyes to a multitude of different people and lifestyles, mostly in the arts. I hung out with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Iman, and Steve Rubell, danced at Studio 54, and studied acting with Andie MacDowell and Tom Hulce." Friends told him he should be in movies. He quit studying at MIT after two weeks to pursue acting. Lundgren said after being exposed to the entertainment business, he found it more attractive and rewarding than chemical engineering, so he decided to pursue a career in acting.
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 DVD and Video Guide of 2005 described the film as being "possibly one of the worst films ever". Later in 1998, Lundgren appeared alongside Bruce Payne and Claire Stansfield in Sweepers as Christian Erickson, a leading demolition expert and head of an elite team of specialists, trained to disarm mine fields in a humanitarian minesweeping operation in Angola. 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".
Social Network
Dolph Lundgren maintains a strong social media presence, with profiles on platforms like Instagram and Twitter. His social media accounts often feature updates from his projects, personal life, and fitness routines.
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. Set in AD 35 in the Roman Empire, the story follows a fictional Roman general named Titus Valerius Taurus, a veteran of campaigns in Germania, who is sent to Judea by the emperor Tiberius to investigate the possibility of the divinity of the recently crucified Jesus. The film, shot on location in Tunisia and Bulgaria, premiered at the Capri, Hollywood and the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival.
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. The film premiered at the Ischia Global Film & Music Festival on 18 July 2009.
Although Lundgren has never competed as a professional bodybuilder, he has been closely associated with bodybuilding and fitness since his role as Drago in the mid-1980s. Bodybuilding.com said, "Looking like a man in his 30s rather than his 50s, Lundgren is the poster boy of precise nutrition, supplementation and exercise application that he has practiced for over 35 years". In an interview with them, he claimed to often train up to six days a week, usually one-hour sessions completed in the morning, saying that "it's just one hour a day, and then you can enjoy the other 23 hours". Although he had begun lifting weights as a teenager, he cites co-star Sylvester Stallone as the man who got him into serious bodybuilding for a period in the 1980s after he arrived in the U.S. Stallone had a lasting influence on his fitness regimen and diet, ensuring that he ate a much higher percentage of protein and split his food intake between five or six smaller meals a day. In 2023, he said in an interview that he took anabolic steroids off and on from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s. Lundgren has professed never to have been "super strong", saying that, "I'm too tall and my arms are long. I think back then [Rocky IV] I was working with around 300 pounds on the bench and squat."
In a January 2011 interview with GQ, he announced he was working on releasing his own range of vitamins and supplements. He wrote an autobiographical fitness book, Train Like an Action Hero: Be Fit Forever, published in Sweden (by Bonnier Fakta) on 9 August 2011, offering tips he learned over the years to work out in various situations (with a busy schedule and a lot of traveling). It also discusses a detailed account of his earlier life and troubles. He cites a better quality of life as having inspired him to maintain his physical fitness.
Education
- Chemical Engineering: Lundgren holds a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Despite his success in the entertainment industry, he has a solid educational background in engineering.
Dolph Lundgren's diverse career and business ventures have not only made him a household name but also secured his financial stability over the years. His ongoing projects and entrepreneurial pursuits continue to contribute to his net worth and legacy in the entertainment industry.
Lundgren received a degree in chemical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in the early 1980s and a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney in 1982. He has been practicing martial arts since the age of 16, earning the rank of 4th dan black belt in Kyokushin karate, and becoming the European champion in 1980 and 1981.
Lundgren has said that, as a child, he was insecure and suffered from allergies, describing himself as a "runt". He showed a keen interest in drumming and had aspirations to become a rock star. At age seven, he tried judo and Gōjū-ryū. He took up Kyokushin karate at the age of 10, and began lifting weights as a teenager. Lundgren stated that "My dad always told me that if I wanted to make something special with my life, I had to go to America." After graduating from high school with straight A's, he spent time in the United States in the 1970s on various academic scholarships, studying chemical engineering at Washington State University 1976–1977, and Clemson University prior to serving his mandatory one year in the Swedish Coastal Artillery at the Coastal Ranger School. In the late 1970s, he enrolled at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and graduated in the early 1980s with a degree in chemical engineering.
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 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".
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.
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. On 23 May, straight-to-video film War Pigs premiered at the GI Film Festival. In the film, Lundgren co-starred (alongside Luke Goss) as Captain Hans Picault, a French Legionnaire who trains a U.S. Army Infantry group to go behind enemy lines and exterminate the Nazis. In August 2015, he started filming Kindergarten Cop 2 in Ontario, Canada, a straight-to-video sequel to the 1990 comedy film that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. 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.
During the 1980s, Lundgren had relationships with Jamaican singer Grace Jones and American model Paula Barbieri. While Lundgren was completing a master's degree in chemical engineering on an exchange program with the University of Sydney in Australia, Jones spotted him at a dance club and hired him as a bodyguard. Lundgren was whisked off to the United States, where he completed his final thesis.
