Rocky & Creed Star Dolph Lundgren Reveals Cancer Diagnosis

For the first time Wednesday, Dolph Lundgren revealed he’s been battling cancer for the better part of the last decade. In an appearance on In Depth With Graham Bensinger, the Rocky IV star revealed he was first diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2015. After a surgery removed the tumor in question, Lundgren said he remained cancer free for five years until it returned in the form of tumors on his kidneys and livers.

“At that point it started to hit me that this is something serious,” Lundgren told Bensinger. “They did a scan for surgery and the surgeon called me to say the tumor’s grown and that it was too big to take out.”

The actor then went on to detail that around the same time, he started to show symptoms associated with the cancer including diarrhea and substantial weight loss. At one point in 2020, Lundgren said he was told he only had two to three years to live.

“I’ve had a great life. I’ve live like five lifetimes in one. So it wasn’t like I felt bitter but I felt sorry for my kids and my fiancé,” Lundgren said of his thoughts at the time.

Since then, Lundgren’s received a second opinion from UCLA Medical Center oncologist Dr. Alexandra Drakaki, who started the actor on a different treatment regiment. The actor started the new medication during the filming of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and says it’s helped reduce the size of his tumors upwards of 90-percent.

Now that the tumors sizes have reduced drastically, Lundgren added that he’ll have to now undergo surgery to remove them. After that, both he and his doctor hope to see no further cancer activity.

“My hope and goal is to try to keep him on this medication as long as possible and just keep getting biopsies as things change within his body to try to identify newer targets for treatment,” Drakaki said during the video segment.