DOLPH AND HIS ROLES.PART 1.

                                                      

                                              

"I was in London 1984, my then girlfriend, Grace Jones was finishing the bond film A View To A Kill. I got a call from Hollywood saying that Sylvester Stallone wanted to meet me for a movie he was making. I didn't know which picture, but they flew me in to LA and I met with him for the first time at the Paramount lot. He had long hair, he was about to start production of Rambo II. He told me it was for Rocky IV, a boxing picture he was working on, and that he was looking at about 5000 people. He thought I had a good chance. He wanted me to gain about 20 pounds of muscle, so I had to start training.

I went through an audition process for about 5 months. Finally in December 1984 I did a screen test. I stayed in a cheap hotel in LA, and on the way to have breakfast I ran into two other tall blond guys who looked incredible muscle bound, both Russians, and it turned out obviously I wasn't alone, there were the two more left from the 5000. They took us to a sound stage, where they had a camera rigged up, and we had a monologue that we had to deliver wearing boxing trunks and gloves. There were about 50 people behind the camera watching, guys in suits, Sylvester and his bodyguards and a bunch of other people.

I was a little nervous to say the least. I had practiced my monologue, and my idea was to play this Russian fighter emotionless, to “underplay” him a little bit. The other guys were screaming, ranting and raving, and I guess people thought my take was better so Sly called me a week later, and I had the part. We shot in LA, Las Vegas, Vancouver (for Moscow) and Wyoming (for Siberia).

Nine months later the movie opened, and I was a known face world wide, which kind of gave me an idea of the power of movies, and how it can change your life very quickly."

     MAXIMUM POTENTIAL BY DOLPH LUNDGREN

                            MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

                                                    
"1986, it was kind of interesting, I went from playing a Russian fighter, the enemy of America during the cold war era, in my next picture playing an American hero, He-man.

It was based on a toy line, so it was a bit strange.
It was a lot of pressure as an actor and even as a person. I felt a bit pressured to live up to that “He-Man image”.

It was also kind of different because we did a lot of effects and I had to work with blue and green screen and animated characters, and a lot of special effects shots. That was new for me."



                                               RED SCORPION

"Started production in 1986, and it was to be shot in South West Africa. At that time there was an apartheid policy still going on, so we had big political problems with the studio. They pulled the financing for the picture for a while, and we where stuck in Johannesburg for three months.

We felt very isolated because there was a war going on between Cuba and South Africa in Angola, and that was actually what the movie was all about. When we ended up into Northern Namibia finally shooting the picture, we where only about an hour away from the actual war scenes, real battles being fought, so we had armed guards on the set and so forth.

But apart from that, it was interesting because I got to co-star with a couple of giraffes, a hyena or two, a four-foot bushman, who only spoke the local “Click” language. He played my sidekick in the movie; he was about 85 years old. Interesting guy to deal with. The director had to have two translators. One who spoke English and Afrikaans,an other one who spoke Afrikaans that's the South Africa language and Click. So every direction he gave went through two people to this 85 year old, who usually ended up going left instead of right, so there was a lot of waiting on the set.

But it was a good shoot, and I've been back to South Africa a couple of times since. This was also my first time on foreign location for a movie."
 























                                                THE PUNISHER





                                                         

                                                           

                      
            
"It was based on a comic strip and it was the first time I played a darker heroic character. The movie was shot in Australia. I went to school there, on a scholarship to the University of Sydney in 1982, so it was interesting to come back there starring in a movie. I hooked up with some of my old friends there, We still stay in touch, even after 20 years.

The character was a Martial Artist also, so I brought in two fighters from my old karate school in Tokyo. One of them turned out to become a world champion years later. Both of them were very good, the problem was that they didn't quite realize that it was only a movie, they thought they had to fight for real, so every time we did a scene, it was quite tough. They have this Japanese code of honor. If they didn't perform well enough, then their honor was at stake. Performing well meant beating me up, so I had to fight for real at times. The upside was that the fight scenes looked very violent, these men where not stunt men, they where real contact fighters trained for the world title in Tokyo.

An added plus in this picture was to work with Louis Gossett Jr, who is a great actor and an academy award winner. He gave me a lot of good advice and a lot of support during the shoot."