Dolph Lundgren and Sylvester Stallone have often come to blows on screen, famously starring together in five testosterone-fuelled film.
A powerful new interview reveals they clashed behind the scenes also.
Dolph vividly describes three separate occasions on the Creed, Expendables and Rocky sets when his fellow Hollywood hardman had it in for him.
One time, Sly furiously accused him of dallying with his wife, while on another occasion he reduced his muscle-bound 6’5 co-star to tears.
The Swedish star says: “We’ve had a few run-ins over the years, but what can I say, he’s a crazy Italian… We had some good times and bad times, kinda like family to some degree.”
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In an exclusive hour-long interview on In Depth with Graham Besinger, Lundgren recalled that Brigitte Nielsen played his wife on 1986’s Rocky 4 – but her own marriage in real life with Stallone was tumultuous at the time and the Danish beauty used her Swedish co-star to make her husband jealous.
Dolph described how Stallone eventually stormed across and growled: “‘Stop hitting on Gita!’ I was going out with Grace (Jones) at the time and I was faithful!”
24 years later, the veteran actors were working on the first film in The Expendables franchise when Stallone’s behaviour shocked everyone on set.
Dolph says: “He was very harsh on me in a scene in Expendables 1, where he kinda yelled at me in front of the whole crew and had me do about 20 takes on a scene. It was like, ‘My grandmother could do it better than that. What the f**k, what are you doing?’ You know, basically in front of everybody. And there was press there that day too, international press…
“We took a lunch break and I remember, I was kind of in tears. I was really upset. I called my wife that time, and I basically just told her, ‘If he says one more word, I’m gonna knock him out and f**k this movie, I’m outta here. I’m just gonna punch him out and f**king leave.’”
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“And I think when I walked on the set, people felt it wasn’t such a good vibration. And then I had a tap on the back and it was Sly. And he was like, ‘Uh, I’m sorry about that. Let’s just do another take and let’s just keep moving on.'”
Eight years later, Dolph finally stood his ground when he returned at Rocky 4’s Ivan Drago in Creed 2 and Stallone started rewriting a scene where the Swede had had a chance to display real depth to his character and his own acting.
He says: “It was the first tie I had stood up to Sly. He had always been my ‘older brother’, I deferred to him but in this case I didn’t, I stood by my guns.”
After hours rehearsing and arguing over the dialogue, Stallone made some concessions and then growled “Can we shoot this f***ing thing now!”
After they finished shooting, Stallone came up and gave Dolph an approving clap on the back: “It was the first time we had acted as equals, before he was always my boss.”
WATCH THE FILL INTERVIEW ON IN DEPTH WITH GRAHAM BESINGER
