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Ivan Drago has been following Dolph Lundgren for decades.
The unstoppable Russian villain of Rocky IV launched Lundgren's career, leading to a long series of tough-guy roles that played on the beauty of the actor and on the physical of Nordic God. Draco also suggested to people that all that Lundgren had to do was perhaps to play with dominant and unemotional men.
But with Creed IILundgren proves that this is not the case. Lundgren delivers the most nuanced performance of his career encompassing the physical and emotional damage with which the actor has lived for decades. he designed an older and shot Draco, a man who was rejected by his people after losing to Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) 33 years ago.
"It was my big break, but she also cataloged me," Lundgren said. The Hollywood journalist from his complicated relationship with Draco. "People think:" It's a robot and it has no emotion. "Now, I can do the opposite and it's very, very satisfying."
When we meet Ivan Drago, he spent years training his son, Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu), for a match he hopes he will buy back the last name: Viktor Drago vs. Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan ), the son. Ivan man killed in the ring.
Perhaps there have been times when Lundgren, 61, wanted to leave Draco behind. But revisit the character in Creed II allowed the actor to solve problems with which he had much fought: abused by his father, uncertainty of a faltering career, how to fight can allow to escape from this suffering.
"That's what I use a lot for Draco," says Lundgren. "It's also a guy who has lost everything and suffered a lot, and I have suffered a lot in my life."
The mythology surrounding Lundgren exceeds that of most of his contemporaries of action in the 80s. Where did Bruce Willis go to school? Who knows. Who did Wesley Snipes have an appointment with before he was successful? No idea. Has Stallone given up another career to become an actor? Not really sure.
But just about everyone who cares about this stuff knows Lundgren's basic story. It was an engineering genius who had left MIT in the 1980s to pursue the New York lifestyle that he enjoyed with his girlfriend of the time, Grace Jones . At the time, he was just a 6 foot 5 inch Swedish fighter that Jones, the famous model and famous singer, had picked up in Australia and brought him to the filming of the 1985 James Bond movie A view of a murder, where Lundgren won a nasty role.
"My father was pretty violent towards me physically and that's why I became a fighter," said Lundgren about his motivation early in his career. "It gave me a lot of energy to succeed and prove to him that I was not a failure and that I was strong."
While devoting himself to academic activities and physical activity had allowed him to escape the traumas of his childhood, the acting game became a new liberation for Lundgren. While he was working as a bouncer in New York, he took acting classes and auditioned at a cattle call for a boxing movie. A casting agent immediately fired him for being too tall, but when Lundgren discovered that the film was Rocky IVhe designed a system to keep his hat in the ring. He ordered pictures of himself in boxing gear and managed to get them to Stallone, who summoned him a few months later to the place of predilection – a meeting that would make a difference. Rocky the franchise and life of Lundgren.
As Lundgren stopped at the Paramount car park in his rental car, he saw the Hollywood sign in the background and soon found himself in front of Stallone, long-haired and invigorated for a role in Rambo: First Blood, Part II.
"The first time I met Dolph Lundgren, he completely changed the concept, I saw the Russian Drago as a beast-man, almost animal, unbeatable," says Stallone. THR. "Then this super-supernatural Viking came in. I said:" That's what people might look like in 500 years – genetically perfect, designed to be the athlete of the future. "
Lundgren was struck by the actor, who in the eight years since his separation with two Oscar nominations for Rockyhad become an A-lister; a macho man who lived with a sensitive artist, the kind of guy who writes a story about a boxer who loves turtles.
Stallone, who wrote and directed Rocky IV – as he had done for the second and third installment of the franchise – showed Lundgren a binder full of pictures of other hopes for the play. The two men took nude photos side by side in boxing trunks and, finally, Lundgren was forced to compete with two other blond men built for the role by delivering a monologue that would be used in the trailer. While the other guys were opting for an extravagant version of Draco ("I fight all my life and I never lose!"), Lundgren followed the advice of his acting coach, Warren Robertson, who told him to play coldly , internally. .
"It's very difficult for the actors to do less," says Lundgren. "It's an advanced action game, actually, do less, play internally, and even though I did not know what I was doing, it was very good on screen, especially with Stallone's close-ups. who is using it."
He landed the room. Lundgren lived with Jones in New York, so he rented a house in Coldwater Canyon for five months of daily training with Stallone. Jones entered the apartment with his entourage after a festive night at about 4 am and Lundgren had to get up at five o'clock. Stallone was strict about his young co-star during their training and noticed that he was showing himself tired. May God help, if he showed up late.
"I ended up staying at home for a while to sleep a little.Great did not appreciate that," says Lundgren laughing. "I was a 27-year-old Swede, stuck between Sylvester Stallone and Grace Jones.This is not so easy.Sly would kick me if I was in trouble, and Grace was going to kill me or worst."
Whatever his level of achievement, Stallone will never pronounce words as famous as "Yo, Adrian!" Similarly, Lundgren has appeared in dozens and dozens of films since Rocky IVbut he will never utter more famous and frightening words than "If he dies, he dies".
This line came after Draco dealt a fatal blow to Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) during an exhibition fight at the MGM Grand Las Vegas. For years, rumors have persisted that Weathers would have threatened to stop filming this scene as it was difficult to be in the ring with Lundgren.
If Weathers was a little worried during the shooting of the fight, who could blame him? While Stallone knew Lundgren for five months, Weathers only met Swedish power on the day of the shoot. Lundgren had repeated the fight with someone else in Los Angeles, and most of it had been improvised the same day.
"When Carl Weathers gets into the ring and suddenly that 6-5 Swede shows up and does not say a word and looks at him like he 's going to kill him, I think he' s l '. looked like this: "What is it? Who is this guy? "Lundgren recalls." He was worried, I know he was there. Stallone was telling me to attack him. I did not want to hit him, but obviously, I hit him a little bit in the body, because that's what you need to do to make it look good. "
Then came the line "When he dies, he dies", which was a surprisingly moving moment for Lundgren.
"When I had to say the answer, my preparation was that I felt really bad, I did not like the fact that he was dead," Lundgren said. "I know that in the movie he is very brutal emotionally, but the way he said it, it's not with a smile." There is a kind of remorse behind it. was definitely what I felt, I really felt bad to see him with all the blood in Stallone's arms, I realized at that moment that I was the villain of the photo. was going to be rough when this thing came out. "
Rocky IV Rocky is the pinnacle in terms of the character's workout and physics, and Stallone has urged Lundgren to be as imposing as possible when it will be Rocky's turn to face Draco.
"It was not against me getting bigger and stronger, and I would put some elevators in some scenes to make myself bigger." I also stood on a box for a few shots, depending on the size of the box. Location of the camera, "says Lundgren. .
Stallone was fighting very hard during the shooting: producing, directing and fighting Lundgren in the last fight, shot in Vancouver and doubled for Russia. Lundgren was worried about Stallone, especially when his boss asked him to pursue him during the shoot.
"I was tired, I was 10 years younger than him, I said I could not do it," recalls Lundgren. "I was throwing him around the ring, and I thought he was going to have some kind of collapse, physically, I was used to being with guys who were fighters and I knew when they would be tired. "
One of Lundgren's punches landed on Stallone's chest. Stallone was found in an emergency jet aircraft to return to Santa Monica, where he was put in intensive care, the heart swollen. Lundgren only discovered that after the fact, when a producer called him.
"I felt bad about that too," he says.
He did not know it yet, but Lundgren had presented a performance that would follow him for the rest of his life.
"Whenever I see Dolph, I see Draco – it's just how iconic that character was," he says. the Expendables co-star Steve Austin.
Lundgren came back to life with Jones and waited Rocky IV to get out. As he often remembered, he entered the premiere of the film as Grace Jones' boyfriend, the photographers pushing him away to take a picture of Jones. He came out of the first as a movie star Dolph Lundgren, Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, the image that persists today.
Rocky IV remains the most profitable film of the franchise, ignoring inflation, with $ 300.5 million worldwide. But Lundgren's new celebrity has put his relationship with Jones to the test.
"We loved each other, there was this kid that she had married in Australia, he was an engineering student and a fighter, and he suddenly became well known overnight," says Lundgren.
The singer wrote in her autobiography of 2015, I will never write my memoirs, that the beginning of the end of their relationship occurred when she went to her hotel room in Los Angeles with a gun, to tell her supervisor that she had need to see him. Their relationship was over in 1986. Meanwhile, the new movie star continued to work on issues stemming from her childhood. His Rocky IV Success came 10 years after the end of his violent childhood and Lundgren said he was not mature enough to confront his father about it.
"It's a complicated problem," Lundgren says. "Basically, he was very proud of me and I forgave him, but the underlying problems still troubled me about five years ago, through therapy, meditation, and other things. it's coming and going. "
After Rocky IV, Lundgren crowned a series of big-budget genre films, including a starring role in He-Man in Masters of the universe (1987), Frank Castle in Marvel & # 39; s The punisher (1989) and a co-leader with Brandon Lee in Clash in the little Tokyo (1991). For a time, he seemed on the verge of embarking on a career similar to that of Jean-Claude Van Damme, a fighter and co-star of 1992. Universal soldier. But Lundgren said at the time he did not have the business knowledge to make it happen.
"I did not know who he really was," says Lundgren after meeting Van Damme. "He had shot one or two movies, but he was very very smart, I thought he was very smart with his image and very knowledgeable about business – a lot more than I was at it. ;time."
Things got complicated for Lundgren in the years that followed universal soldier. He played in a handful of movies on the big screen, but his role in the years 1995 Johnny Mnemonic would be his last in a widely released movie for 15 years. Lundgren lived in exile DVDs, and his marriage with his ex-wife Anette Qviberg collapsed. He took the blame for that, alluding, over the years, to poor behavior and infidelity on his part.
"I did smaller independent films, my career was not going so well," says Lundgren at that time. "I moved to Spain with my ex-wife.I had two children and I was not doing it well.I started drinking too much.I was depressed."
Then in 2009, a miracle. Stallone called to say that he was putting together a movie – one that is one of the toughest films of the past 25 years.
The Expendables Lundgren's career has changed again, allowing him to return to the big screen in a property whose premise was irresistible to action fans in the same way that the idea of seeing The Avengers on the big screen was for Marvel fans in 2012. Stallone brought together guys like Jason Statham. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jet Li and Bruce Willis. He wrote for Lundgren a character called Gunnar Jensen, chemical engineer and MIT stall. (This sounds familiar?) Two sequels followed, the series reporting $ 804.1 million globally and a fourth being discussed.
"Before that, I had a lot of difficulties and I did not know what was going to happen in my career and how I was going to support my family and things like that," Lundgren said.
After years of alternately embracing Draco as part of him and wanting to show what else he could do as an actor, Creed II proved to Lundgren that he and the Russian boxer were closely related, more than he knew. Like Draco, he knows what it's like to be competing at the top of his bunch and then disappearing. He knows what it means to lose his family. And in the sequel, he experiences from the other side of the father-son equation who shaped his life, hinting that if Ivan is not really physically violent towards his Viktor's son, he inflicts at least emotional damage by pushing his son. very difficult.
After reading the Creed II scenario, Lundgren immediately considered playing Draco as being older and worn out. (He's still in incredible form, for information.) He introduced this vision to director Steven Caple Jr.
"At first, he was not sure of that, but then he agreed," says Lundgren. "So he made my clothes too big so that I could still look like I had lost weight or something."
There is a surprising scene in Creed II in which Rocky and Drago meet for the first time in decades. Draco describes his life after the defeat of this fight in 1985. It's a subtle and touching moment that is crucial to the aftermath of events – and the lines presented by Lundgren fought to stay in the script.
"This scene has been rewritten many times, some things that I found wonderful were removed and I fought to put them back," Lundgren said. "Things were put back to the water because I said," I will not pull it in any other way. "People have to understand where I come from and it's one of the few scenes where we understand what the hell this guy is talking about, and it was an important scene and I'm very happy that it's in the photo, at in the original version, there were five versions. "
Caple chose to open his film with Ivan as a living man for his son's training, noting: "You have felt the dynamics of Dolph's character somehow resembling this contest daddy."
"I really wanted people to feel both characters at the end of the film," adds Caple. "I did not want to have the bad guy, I did not want it to turn into a cartoon, I wanted everything to stay in this isolated place."
Some viewers might be surprised by the quality of the dramatic actor Lundgren in the film, but Stallone does not actually belong to it.
"Dolph is a very deep and extremely sensitive person that people have never worn him, because he has come into this business as such a remarkable physical specimen," Stallone said. "It was a book judged by its cover, but I always knew how good it was and is intense."
Lundgren has always graciously ignored comparisons with other stars of his generation, pointing out that someone will always be richer than you or will have a bigger biceps than you. But he is in the middle of a career that could make his contemporaries jealous. A month later Creed II opens, he will have a role in James Wan Aquaman for Warner Bros. and DC as King Nereus. When did a 1980s action star appear for the last time in two films about to be so financially and critically successful in one year, let alone a few weeks apart?
In the next month Aquaman, Lundgren shares the screen with the larger-than-life action hero of the next generation: Jason Momoa. Momoa and he spent a few days training together and even mentioned the possibility of doing something else together, but their first meeting was not the one Lundgren expected.
"He was in his caravan and he went out, I never met him then I said:" Hi Jason. "And he looks at me, nods and does not say nothing, "says Lundgren. "And then he comes to me," Oh, I'm sorry man, I did not recognize you. " He did not know that it was me because I looked so different [in costume and makeup]. "
Although Lundgren acknowledges that it's all about a special moment in his career, he seems more proud of how these roles allowed him to dig deeper than to draw the ## 147 ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Be careful that he could get because of this.
"I have never been in this business to impress people with my physique and try to be badass, because I already was, I was in it. Army, I was already a fighter, I was a champion, I went there originally because I love being creative, "says Lundgren. "I had to overcome some of the traumas of my childhood, but I did not know how to do it, it took me years to do it on the big screen, but with good, good filmmakers, not one. movie will never see, sometimes it's hard to dig and strip your soul in a movie instead of simply choosing the easy way out. "
– Mia Galuppo contributed to the reports.
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