Dolph Lundgren's Secret 8-Year Cancer Battle: 'Rocky' Star Speculates Steroids Led to Diagnosis
May 10 2023, Published 2:20 p.m. ET
Swedish film actor Dolph Lundgren came clean about the serious health issues he's been privately battling, RadarOnline.com has learned, revealing his cancer diagnosis for the first time.
The Creed II star said a tumor was found in his kidney and swiftly removed in 2015, noting that a biopsy confirmed the mass was cancerous during an interview with In Depth With Graham Bensinger.
He continued to do scans every six months, followed by yearly scans to make sure it was not spreading. Lundgren was in remission until 2020, when he was given a terminal cancer diagnosis and told he only had between two to three years to live.
"I was back in Sweden, and had some kind of acid reflux ... so I did an MRI. They found there were a few more tumors around that area," the 6-foot-5 filmmaker shared.
Lundgren suspects his use of steroids for bodybuilding in his younger years may have caused the cancer.
The actor later had six tumors removed during a surgical procedure.
In a clip from 2020, he could be seen wearing a hospital gown. "It's the day after my surgery, they took out one tumor, then they took out another two they found and another three small ones."
"Hopefully it's cleaned out, if it dies, it dies," he said, referencing his line in the 1985 film Rocky IV with a smile on his face.
The video was captured years before RadarOnline.com exclusively learned that Lundgren was left bewildered and "stunned" after former Rocky lead actor Sylvester Stallone took to Instagram with a scathing message about the spinoff centered around Lundgren's character, Drago, claiming it was made without his knowledge or approval.
Lundgren explained during a follow-up interview how he was going to direct and star in a project set to shoot in the fall of 2020, but he got a call when he was in Alabama informing him another tumor was found in his liver.
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"At that point, it started to hit me. This is kind of something serious," he said. Lundgren revealed that doctors did a scan to prepare for surgery and discovered that it was too big to remove. It was the size of a "small lemon" so he was told to try a different therapy.
Lundgren said he ultimately went for a consultation with Dr. Alexandra Drakaki to get a second opinion and they have seen his tumors shrink.
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