Awesome Celebrity Birthday Of The Day: Dolph Lundgren

Posted at 12:00 PM Nov 03, 2008

By Kathleen Willcox

Welcome to NCDSUV's newest daily feature, where we acknowledge another turn of the calendar for a member of Hollywood land, even if it's a celebrity who often goes overlooked by the rest of the blogosphere, and regardless of whether we have a huge affinity for their body of work.

On Friday we blew out our most festively ghoulish birthday candles for tough n’ tender sidekick specialist David Ogden Stiers. Today, we respectfully doff our hats to a Fulbright scholar, Kyokushin Karate virtuoso and man who possesses prodigious enough cojones to rumble with Sylvester Stallone (onscreen at least).

Today's Awesome Celebrity Birthday Belongs To:

Dolph Lungren
Age: 51
Why He's Sort Of Awesome: Dude is an overgrown Rain Man (sans the propensity to memorize phone books) on steroids with a good plastic surgeon, a bad tanning habit and an inadvisable dye job. Not only is Dolph some sort of quintilingual chemical engineer super-genius, but in rehearsals as Stallone’s nemesis Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, he earned perma tough-guy status by punching the Italian Stallion so hard he ended up in intensive care for four days with a swollen heart. And who can forget his brilliant turn as He-Man in the cinematic tour-de-force Masters Of The Universe?
Most Likely Celebrity Status 20 Birthdays From Now: While Dolph’s star has dimmed considerably since the '80s, and he's now featured primarily in direct-to-video, slap-happy action fests, by the time he’s 70 the general public should be cynical and low-brow enough to welcome an elderly action-hero face-off on primetime TV. Expect to see an obstacle course involving Jazzy Power Chairs, steep inclines, dueling matches with steel canes and slip-and-slides covered in arthritis-friendly Ben Gay.
All Apologies To: Roseanne, Kate Capshaw and Adam Ant.

Tune in tomorrow for an Election Day edition of NCDSUV's Awesome Celebrity Birthday Of The Day.