Dolph Lundgren: post your questions for the actor and director

As he releases his latest film as a director, what do you want to ask the man who played the ultimate Euro-iceman in 80s action flicks?

Here’s some things you might not know about Dolph Lundgren: he’s got a master’s in chemical engineering, Jerry Springer played the US president in his directorial debut The Defender, and his real first name is … Hans.

Well, would Hans Lundgren have been the same big deal? The ultimate Euro-iceman in the 1980s, he played a villain in Bond film A View to a Kill (at the behest of then-girlfriend Grace Jones who had a starring role), and man-mountain Soviet boxer Ivan Drago in the fondly remembered Rocky IV (so fondly remembered, in fact, that director-star Sylvester Stallone, weirdly, felt the need to release a director’s cut a few weeks back). Lundgren, notoriously, put Stallone in hospital with a dangerously swollen heart after he was allowed to whale on his co-star, no holds barred, for a few seconds.

Not having really meant to be an actor in the first place, he transitioned into a star of head-cracking action pictures in the 1990s, the third in the great action B-movie triumvirate of Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. The standout is probably Universal Soldier, alongside Van Damme – another Euro expert in human bashing – which also happened to be Roland Emmerich’s first Hollywood film. Other highlights of the period include martial arts pic Showdown in Little Tokyo, cyber thriller Johnny Mnemonic, and mercenary drama Men of War.

Not going to lie, things seemed to go downhill a bit for Lundgren when the new millennium dawned, as the kind of whack-and-run film he specialised in lost ground. Luckily, though, he could ride the noughties’ nostalgic wave of affection for those 80s/90s action films by getting a role in Stallone’s revival project The Expendables, getting his face alongside the likes of Stallone himself, Jason Statham and Stone Cold Steve Austin.

But there is another string to his bow. Oddly enough he had forged a working relationship with – of all people – Sidney J Furie, the Canadian director who had knocked everyone for six with The Ipcress File in the 1960s. After starring in two successive films – Furie – Detention in 2003 and Direct Action in 2004 – Lundgren embarked on a new career as a director after Furie became ill while shooting a third, The Defender. Lundgren has directed four more films since; including the new one, Castle Falls, which features Scott Adkins.

So you’ve no doubt got hundreds of questions for Mr Lundgren. Post your questions in the comments below. The thread will close at noon GMT on 8 December and the responses will be published soon.

• Castle Falls is released on Digital from 20th December and Blu-ray & DVD 10th January 2022