He's a softly spoken chemical engineering graduate, devoted family man, talented linguist and budding writer with an IQ rumoured to be nudging 160. I'm meeting him at his workplace. But it's not a science lab. Neither has my interviewee just penned a scientific treatise. Actually, he's been driving across Bulgaria, pursued by Russian mafia villains. Don't get alarmed. You see, the academic also has a penchant for killing people  – cleanly and efficiently – yet always escapes unscathed.

Square jawed action hero, gentle giant, cold-eyed on-screen killer, sizzling Swedish sex siren, martial arts champion, bulging bodybuilder, fledgling film director and screenwriter – Dolph Lundgren is all these things and more. He became an icon on the back of Rocky 4, playing Soviet strongman Ivan Drago, Sylvester Stallone's impassive, super-tough boxing foe. That was 24 years ago, but in some ways it seems more. The movie was unashamedly exploitative: Commie-bashing Reagan-era Cold War hokum, the moral West versus the so-called Evil Empire, the caring Italian Stallion fighting the robotic, doped up totalitarian ice-man. Needless to say, at the end of the movie, Drago is pummelled into submission, presumably to languish in Siberia for several years. The defeat must have been a bit galling for Lundgren, the holder of a third degree Black Belt in Kyokushin karate who towered over Stallone! 

Tolstoy it wasn't, but Rocky 4 was strangely effective. Stallone knew how to win over his audience; by the climactic fight you hate Drago so much you'd like to sock him yourself. Dolph was just starting out, having won a minor part in a James Bond movie, A View to a Kill. His girlfriend at the time was singer/supermodel Grace Jones who achieved immortality on British television when she thumped chat show host Russell Harty. Such celluloid moments, similar to Emu attacking Michael Parkinson, or a drunken Oliver Reed on the Michael Aspel, stay with you until they close the coffin lid. The Harty incident still lurked in my subconscious, making me slightly wary of Dolph on the guilt by association basis. But, as I soon discovered, Dolph only thumps people on screen and is charm personified off it.  

Lucrative DVD rentals
Dolph greets me at the Nu Boyana film studios, where he's shooting his latest action flick, his 35th movie, called Direct Contact. A huge 50-year-old with absurdly well-chiselled features, he's extremely friendly and self-deprecating. He's in great physical shape - barrel chested, a lumberjack's vitality, not an ounce of fat, testament to regular workouts. We visit the canteen, where Dolph is joined by Jeremie Damoiseau, a French filmmaker who runs a Dolph fan site. Jeremie cites a recent movie called Missionary Man,  which Dolph also directed, earning a whopping $2.15 million in only its first five days of DVD rentals, as one displaying Dolph's uncanny ability to convey a character with little dialogue. 

Inside the studio they're setting up a car chase involving Dolph and his co-star Gina Marie May. The director is Danny Lerner, producer of more than 100 movies. A wiry, sharp-featured South African-born Israeli, he lives in Bulgaria half the year. He's worked with so many of the crew and technicians on previous shoots that he likens them to family. Lerner needs close-ups of Dolph driving and Gina ducking bullets in the back seat of a car, shots that will be mixed with unused footage from a previous film's car chase. Lerner looks through the monitor, occasionally muttering comments, but it's the altogether more trenchant tones of first assistant director Mark Roper, calling cast and crew to their marks, that resonate around the set.  

Clint leads the way
A crewmember rocks the car back and forth and Dolph grabs the steering wheel, simulating rapid turns. Gina does her “Oh my God!” rendition convincingly enough. Dolph reclines in his chair between shots, looking a little jaded. It's day 22 of a 24 day shoot and perhaps Dolph's starting to miss his family, his Swedish wife Anette Quivberg and their two daughters, 12-year-old Ida and six-year-old Greta. 

Lerner also rates Dolph's abilities highly, telling me that he does many of his own action sequences.  Direct Contact is a low budget (six million dollar) movie about a prisoner in a Russian jail who's offered freedom if he rescues a kidnapped American woman. Unlike the Black Dahlia, which was also filmed in Sofia at the Boyana Nu film studios, filming has proceeded fast. Danny says that they sometimes get through 30 set-ups a day, as opposed to about six on the Black Dahlia. Dolph cracks a lot of jokes between takes. But in the 30 seconds or so before a new shot he psyches himself up, looking like the kind of guy who'd blow you away with the twitch of a nostril. His profile, squint and husky slow-spoken drawl are all reminiscent of Clint Eastwood, coincidentally Dolph's idol and role model. “Here was a guy who made action movies but has since gone on to make fantastic films as a director. And at the age of 77 he's still making great movies,” says Dolph. 

Dolph has now directed three films, learning very much on the job. In a way his fame restricts him.  He'd like to direct different kinds of projects but financing for movies only comes if he appears in them. The public have got used to seeing him in action flicks. Dolph will probably stick to the action genre but will direct more. Another movie, also to be filmed in Sofia (his fourth in Bulgaria), looms. Provisionally titled Command Performance, it's still not cast but he describes it as “a kind of Die Hard 2 set in an opera house”, which he will also direct. Directing is about total control, so I wonder if Dolph gets itchy hands when he's just an actor again. “I may suggest a few minor changes, like an entrance or the pace of dialogue, but I'd never contest a director's artistic vision,” he says.

Rocky's still his favourite
He remembers Rocky 4 as still his own favourite role. He beat 500 others to appear in that movie. But when I ask if there any likelihood of his reprising the role – as Stallone has done so successfully with the Rocky franchise – he demurs. “I doubt that Ivan Drago will be getting into his boxing trunks again. Stallone made these characters, Rocky and Rambo, and because they're his inventions it's different for him. I've never been asked to reprise the role but I'm very grateful to Sly.”

Perhaps Dolph did make one major blunder. “I was sent the script for Gladiator about two years before it went into production. I thumbed through it and it didn't seem all that interesting. It bore no similarity to the movie that eventually made its way to the screen.” Maybe it would have catapulted Dolph back into the mainstream.  As it is, most of Dolph's movies go straight to the DVD market.

I have my picture taken next to Dolph. I'm no midget (6 foot 2) but I look small next to Dolph. He works hard to stay in shape, training intensively four times a week with a Russian fitness coach 15 years younger than him. He admits to enjoying vodka and tequila but is a non-smoker. Home is Marbella, on Spain's Costa Del Sol, once home to Sean Connery, Joan Collins and many other luminaries. He's honest why he likes it. “I've spent time in other Mediterranean countries like Italy Greece and the South of France but these are countries that prefer outsiders to adapt to their culture. In Spain, on the other hand, you're left alone to enjoy your own culture.”

The car chase is over. Dolph looks at the scene on the monitor and grins. “It's insane, isn't it? It reminds me of driving back home in Marbella!”

Insanity, in a way, sums up the whole filmmaking process. For every minute of film there's probably another 60 minutes spent waiting around and perfecting set ups. Yet movie making is also thrilling and strangely addictive. I suspect that Dolph has now caught “the director's bug” and that we'll be seeing a lot more of him, both in front of and behind the camera.

Dolph emerges into the daylight. The sight of the Mountain Man against the backdrop of Vitosha seems strangely apt. I think we'll be seeing him in Sofia very often.

* Special thanks to Rumyana Popova, Dolph Lundgren's personal assistant, for arranging this interview.