Image via Lionsgate.

Dolph Lundgren personifies Hollywood and all the fantastical mythology that goes with it.

That statement must shock you.

At 6’5”, he is a feral yet perfectly groomed blonde mass of muscular terrain, dressed in a pink checkered shirt and crisp cotton suit—primed for a Sunday filled with interviews with every outlet known to man for his new film, The Expendables 3. Today Lundgren is like a specimen under a microscope, one that will be probed and prodded again and again with the same questions, with no respite in sight except the 15 minutes of downtime between journalists.

What makes him a Hollywood poster child is not so much his physicality, but what he represents as an actor—the differentiation between what we imagine him to be onscreen, and the reality of the man offscreen. Lundgren attended the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden and received a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia. Subsequently he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to MIT.

At 56, Lundgren has definitely been around the proverbial block. While his 1980s ex Grace Jones got him a sweet bit role in the Bond film A View to a Kill, he owes much to Sylvester Stallone, who cast the Swede as his opponent in Rocky IV. On the eve of his 3rd bout with Stallone and a host of others (Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas, and Kellan Lutz to name a few) Lundgren talked about a myriad of subjects including the last one you thought would come from an action star: meditation.

This round of The Expendables feels like an analogy for Hollywood. Out with the old, in with the new… crew.

Sly wrote the script and this film certainly, like Rocky, is about himself. Forty years later, he does the first Expendables and he’s found people—for the most part—who were washed up and couldn’t do anymore action movies—and piled a few other guys into it and it made money. And now with the third one he’s perfected it. I think what’s cool is you see these iconic actors, like Mel Gibson, and in him you see Lethal Weapon and Braveheart, and then Harrison Ford and you see Jack Ryan, and then Arnold of course, and you see Terminator. In a way, it also evokes a nostalgia for a different Hollywood.

There’s a sort of subversive undercurrent of tossing aside the older crew for the newbies. But then again, everything old is new again.

With the first Expendables, I hadn’t been in a theatrical picture in 15 years, so it helped to reinvent me. Arnold, Wesley, Mel… we’ve all gone through some major changes—take the guys that Hollywood sees as ‘expendable’ and they can do something amazing onscreen.

Did you guys hang out offscreen in Bulgaria?

Hollywood is rather an impersonal place. But when you’re in Bulgaria together for three months, you end up going to the gym together, having dinner together… these are some of my closest friends in the business now.

There’s a ton of scowling on your part in this film.

Is there? Well, Gunner (my character) has a lot of substance abuse problems in the first round of this film, and now he seems to be more together, but he’s still not likable. There were many scenes where I just had the camera poised on me and I had to just ‘be’. Being just in the nothingness… to do nothing on camera is actually quite difficult.

That’s very Bergman.

…or maybe Buddhist. I do meditation a lot now, so maybe it’s that.

What kind of meditation do you do? I’ve been contemplating learning it too for a while.

I study Vipassana. I got a DVD on meditation by Jack Kornfield, and then I got a great book called Mindfulness in Plain English. It only took me 50 years to get to this point. [In this kind of meditation] You don’t focus on an object—you focus on your body, your breath, and how you feel. It kind of just gets rid of a lot of crap that’s spinning in your head—or at least, my head. I think the main purpose is to crush the ego, so you get rid of jealousy, hate, and retaliation—feelings that basically hold you back as a human being.

And has it been good so far?

That is the biggest thing that’s happened to me in the past two years. I practice now everyday. What is it that they say about meditation? “What we need is a cup of understanding, a barrel of love, and an ocean of patience.” Take your time and experience it. It just kind of makes you see life a little clearer, I think.

The Expendables 3 opens everywhere Friday, August 15th.