Also that year, he had his breakthrough in Sylvester Stallone 's Rocky IV , in which he played the lead villain as the imposing Soviet boxer Ivan Drago. Moving into the s, Lundgren mostly appeared in direct-to-video films. During this time, Lundgren started directing and starring in his own films; these are The Defender , The Mechanik , Missionary Man , and Command Performance Lundgren returned to prominence in with the role of Gunner Jensen in Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables alongside an all-action star cast.
He reprised his role in its sequels. He has since appeared in the well-received films Aquaman , Castle Falls , which he also directed, Don't Kill It , and Showdown at the Grand , among others. In television, he has appeared in SAF3 and Arrow Lundgren received a degree in chemical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in the early s and a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney in 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 and 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. Lundgren has said that, as a child, he was insecure and suffered from allergies, describing himself as a "runt". He took up Kyokushin karate at the age of 10, and began lifting weights as a teenager. In the late s, he enrolled at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and graduated in the early s with a degree in chemical engineering.
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 s. Upon learning that Sylvester Stallone was seeking an imposing fighter to play Soviet boxer Ivan Drago in Rocky IV , 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. 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.
