Dolph Lundgren Reveals He's Been Battling Cancer for 8 Years
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Dolph Lundgren has spent the better part of the last decade battling cancer, and he's finally ready to open up about his experience with the disease.
In a new interview on In Depth With Graham Bensinger, the Swedish action star was seen in a hospital room, wearing a hospital gown, explaining he'd just had six tumors surgically removed. That clip was dated 2020.
"If it dies, it dies. It will die," he said at the time.
It all started when they found a tumor in his kidney in 2015, which he had removed in Los Angeles. His scans remained clear for several years after the fact, until 2020, when he began experiencing something like acid reflux. He went in for an MRI, which spotted several new tumors in the same area as the first.
He also had one in his liver, which was too big to remove, leading to systemic therapies that had a pretty negative impact on his health, making it difficult to eat and causing significant weight loss. The tumors continued to spread throughout his body, but he says he didn't receive much information from his team in LA, leaving him in the dark about much of his condition.
When his care was transferred to London, where he was shooting The Expendables 4 and a sequel to Aquaman, in the fall of 2021, his new doctor suggested he start taking it easy and spend more time with his family. It was then that it really hit him how severe it all was.
At the time, they guessed Lundgren had a maximum of two to three years left to live. He said he wasn't bitter, having felt like he lived several lifetimes, but felt for his family and his friends.
During filming, when the Rocky actor was under the impression he had only a few months left, he sought a second opinion. A new team evaluated his condition and found that he had a specific mutation targeted by a variety of medications, leaving the new team much more hopeful about his prognosis.
Now, Lundgren says his tumors have shrunk by about 90 percent, and they're in the process of taking out what remains. He hopes that when all is said and done, there will be no more signs of cancer and that one of his medications will succeed in continuing to suppress any tumor growth.
As a result of the experience, Lundgren said, "You appreciate life a lot more. You appreciate every day, every day I can be with the people I love. You just appreciate being lucky enough to be alive."
And while it's taken a while for him to open up about his diagnosis, he hopes that by doing so he may help someone else in a similar situation. "If it can save one person's life who is in my situation, then it's worth it, for sure."
