Dolph Lungren is a Swedish actor who made his name as an action star in the Rocky series as a Russian boxer. But at home he’s been in a much tougher fight.
Lundgren, 65, spoke about his kidney cancer diagnosis for the first time with journalist Graham Bensinger during an appearance on In Depth With Graham Bensinger, published Wednesday.
“This is just the first time I’ve spoken about it. So if you can save one person’s life who was in my situation then it’s worth it, for sure,” he said.
He said he’s been battling the illness since 2015.
“Then I did scans every six months. Then you do it every year and it was fine for five years,” explained Lundgren. “In 2020, I was back in Sweden and had some kind of acid reflux… So I did an MRI, and they found that there were a few more tumors around that area.”
After he underwent surgery, during which six tumors were removed, Lundgren recalled: “There’s a picture that I was going to direct and star in that was starting in the fall. The doctor called me when I was in Alabama ready to shoot and said, ‘They found one more tumor in the liver.'”
“At that point, it started to hit me that this is kind of something serious,” he continued. “They did a scan to prepare for surgery. And the surgeon called me and said, ‘No, it’s grown now. It’s too big. We can’t take it out. It’s like the size of a small lemon.'”
See the full interview below: