Healing and forgiveness | Dolph Lundgren | TEDxFulbrightSantaMonica

The movie Rocky IV turned Dolph Lundgren, aka Soviet boxer Ivan Drago, into a Hollywood star. Exactly 30 years later, the Fulbrighter Dolph Lundgren shares his personal fight worth fighting with a live audience at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. “If you heal yourself you can heal others” is the message of this surprising TEDxFulbright talk about a fighter who became a social activist.

Best known for his performance in Rocky IV as Ivan Drago, Dolph has starred in over 50 films. He was awarded a Fulbright to MIT after graduating at the head of his class in chemical engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He also completed an exchange program with the University of Sydney.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I'd like to tell you a story.

It's about a little boy

who grew up in Sweden,
in the '60s and '70s.

His dad was this tall,
good-looking army officer.

His mom was this pretty but shy linguist.

He had a brother and two sisters,
and they lived in suburb of Stockholm.

And that little boy was me.

I think I remember
the first time my dad hit me.

I was around three or four, I think.

I was walking in front of the TV
and he kicked me,

and I flew into some bookshelves.

And I remember there was blood
and my mom was screaming.

You see, my dad had a lot of problems
and he took it out on me and my mom.

He never touched my brothers or sisters.

And this started
when I was about three or four

and went on till I was about 11 or 12.

It was a really hard part of my life

because I had to go to school
with a black eye or, you know,

some of my hair was missing
because he'd been yanking my head.

I think some of you may know
what I'm talking about.

I understand how you're feeling.

You see, when you get abused at home,

you have two choices,
just like and animal: fight or flight.

You can either run away,

which was impossible for me
because I was a little kid living at home;

or you can fight back,

which I couldn't do because,
you know, I was just a little kid.

My dad was my size.

But I learned later
there's a third choice:

you freeze.

It's like a gazelle being taken by a lion.

You just freeze and go dead;
all your emotions are bottled up inside.

I would just [lie] there.

When he was hitting me,
I wouldn't even cry.

And, by the time I was 11 or 12,
I was smoking, I was drinking,

I was running away from home
on stolen motorcycles,

sleeping over in someone's garage,

but my dad always found me.

Back home for another beating.

So, my grades at school were terrible,

and my dad said,
"I've got to do something.

I've got get rid of this kid somehow
and get him out of here."

So, he decided to send me up north,
to his parents', my grandparents'.

And they lived in a small town
in the northern part of Sweden.

Now, Sweden is a country pretty far north.

I mean, Stockholm in the winter
gets dark at 2:30 p.m..

Stockholm was like Miami Beach,
compared to the place I was being sent.

But my grandparents were quite nice to me,

and they took care of me
and my grades got better.

I discovered ice hockey,
and then weight training, and karate,

and I started to heal.

And, by the time I was about 17 or 18,
I remembered something my dad had told me.

Because, you know,
my dad was this pretty smart guy,

he was very charming, he was a nice guy -

most of the time,
when he wasn't going nuts.

And he told me, "Listen -

Listen, kid, this socialistic country,
forget it, you can't do anything here.

If you want to be somebody,
you've got to go to America."

I always remembered that.

So, I kind of got all the scholarships
I could because I didn't have any money.

I got a scholarship to WSU,
Washington State University;

another one to Clemson.

Finally, I got a
Fulbright sholarship to MIT,

which is the reason I am standing here.

And there was just one little snag -

because, my forth year
to my last year as a master's,

I was in Sydney,
at the University of Sydney,

and I was studying engineering
on a scholarship,

and I was working extra as a bouncer

because, you know,
that trauma is really helpful

when you get into a ring with somebody.

So, I became a pretty good fighter.

I was a karate champion and I had
what you call a "killer instinct."

So, me and my buddy
who was my sparring partner

got hired to do some special work
at a rock concert, different artists,

and one of them was
this beautiful black singer,

a statuesque lady named Grace Jones.

We worked there and, afterwards,

she hired some of us to do
especial security at her party

when she was going to go out
and hang out at the nightclubs in Sydney.

I didn't really realize right away why
she'd picked this tall, blond, buff guy

to be her special security.

But, you know, I found out
later that evening.

(Laughter)

I, uh -

(Laughter)

I ended up in a hotel room,

missed a few classes
the next day, college -

And, you know,
she was a world-class artist,

totally out of my league.

That's what I thought,
but she didn't agree, you know.

So, we ended up having this relationship.

I went to Tokyo to do some karate,
she was there doing a commercial.

Then I ended up moving to New York.

So, I had a couple of months
before I was going to start at MIT,

and those months literally changed my life
because my what happened was -

This was New York city, Studio 54 -

I met David Bowie, Michael Jackson.

First week I was there,
I went to some party.

There was a little guy with white hair.

He came up to me and said,
"Hi! What are you famous for?"

He took a picture of me and I'm like,
"Nothing, as far as I know."

And he goes, "Hey, I want
to put you on my magazine."

Well, that was Andy Worhol,
Interview Magazine.

So, finally, when it was time to go back
to school, to Cambridge, MIT,

chemical engineering just didn't seem
as exciting, somehow.

(Laughter)

So -

But, anyway, I picked this big black
motorcycle I had bought, 1200CC,

threw Grace on the back,
all decked out in leather.

I got in my leather pants,

I didn't wear a shirt
too often in those days.

I drove up to Cambridge,

and I think the professors at MIT
had a slightly different idea

of who this Swedish star student was -

(Laughter)

So, when this thing just - "vroom" -
went past a window,

I think they were
sort of shocked, you know.

They expected somebody else,
slightly smaller,

maybe with some Coke-bottle
glasses or something,

but, anyway, they were as shocked
as I was not belonging there.

I felt that right away,
and three weeks later I was gone.

I went back to New York,

got an agent - so all other actors -

started studying, acting,
got up for a couple of movies.

One was a "boxing" movie.

It turned out to be Rocky IV,
and I auditioned for it.

Finally, I got the role, moved out here.

I was training with Sly Stallone
down here, about a mile away from here.

And the film was shot and opened
30 years ago, Memorial Day.

And I came out of the theater with Grace
and people were taking pictures of me,

and I'm like, "What happened?
Oh, I guess I'm a movie star. OK, great."

But, you know, the problem was this:
my troubles had only started,

because what happened
was that frozen part of me -

remember that I told you? -

started coming out
and kind of running my life.

Because what happens is this:
when you have this trauma,

it's like a soldier
with post-traumatic stress.

You end up acting on something
called escape behavior.

You try to escape from something
you can't escape from

because it's inside of you:

drinking, sexual affairs,
overeating, violence, you name it.

I did a lot of bad things to myself,

and, 25 years later, 40 movies later,

yeah, I was a movie star,
but I was miserable most of the time.

I had a failed marriage,

two daughters who I loved,
but they didn't even know me.

My career was kind of rock-bottom.

This was only five years ago,

and I didn't know how to get out of it.

Two things happened.

I got a call from
my old buddy Sly Stallone,

"Hey, Dolph, how are you doing?"

(Laughter)

"I've got this script, so check it out,
see what you think."

Well, the script was called
The Expendables.

It was a big hit, I was back
in the big screen after 15 years.

The other thing is I met this girl,
fell in love with her,

and I knew I was going to embark
on the same stupid path

I'd been down before.

Actually, something happened.

Some girl was flirting with me,
I gave her my number -

The usual: the text,
the pictures; she saw it -

A few of you may have been there.

She went nuts, we were about to break up,

and I said, "I can't do this.
I've got to change my life somehow."

She'd told me before,
"Why don't you try therapy?"

I was like, "Forget about it.
It's for sissies."

"What about meditation?"

"Ah, do I look like an Indian guru?
I don't think so."

(Laughter)

So, to make a long story short,

I took up therapy
three years ago, meditation,

and it totally changed my life.

Suddenly, this fog
that I was living in lifted.

I did the therapy
where you go back in time,

you relive your experiences, you cry,
scream, you roll up in a little ball,

you hit the couch
with a baseball bat, you know,

anything you've got to do
to start to attack this part of you,

this frozen part of me
that was running my life.

And slowly it started to become
smaller and smaller,

and I could sort of see my life
come back to me.

And the meditation helped as well.

So, the first thing I did:

I went back to see my kids,

and I asked them for forgiveness
for what I had done

because I told them
what happened with my dad,

and I was a guy who
didn't like what I'd done,

and they started crying right away.

And I realized they had had a lot of pain,
and I cried with them.

I did the same with my ex-wife,

and a few other people I had hurt.

And, as a matter of fact,
I also, in my head, forgave my dad

for what he did,

and my mom, for what she didn't do.

And I started embarking on this new life.

It was like a fight worth fighting,
to come to terms with yourself,

to heal yourself.

But what I didn't realize
was there's another level to that,

because, once you start
healing yourself and feel better,

you see other people around you
who need help, who have pain.

And faith kind of came to me,

and I wrote and produce a movie
about human trafficking,

called Skin Trade.

And I learned about human trafficking,
which is a terrible crime.

There are 20 million slaves
in the world today.

It's a 20-billion-dollar industry,
second largest in the world.

These people are physically humiliated,
psychologically abused.

They have no self worth,
sort of like how I used to feel.

And kind of faith brought me
in contact with this,

with human trafficking and these victims.

When I came back to LA,
I called an organization called CAST,

and asked them if I could help -

Coalition to Abolish
Slavery and Trafficking.

Well, I've been helping them ever since,

and it's a great feeling for me
to finally give something back.

You know, a lot of this human trafficking

isn't just happening in, like, India,
and Africa, and over there.

As a matter of fact,
one of the most interesting cases

was a girl that was brought over
from a Third World country

by a very wealthy family.

She was kept in a house,
they took her passport,

kept on the guard all the time,
threatened her with violence,

threatened her family.

You know where the house was?

In Brentwood, right here,

about a mile from here.

And she didn't know what to do.

They brought this American nanny in
to take care of the little kid,

and they talked, and the American
nanny said she'd help her,

but nothing happened,
a week passed, a month passed -

Finally, they were coming back
from the park one day.

She was taking care of this kid,
and there was this security guy as usual,

and there were 15 FBI agents
outside of the house.

They took her inside and said,

"Do you want to stay
or do you want to leave?"

She said, "I want to leave."

CAST got her into a shelter,
re-educated her, brought her back.

She learned a job.

She finally ended up
getting a green card.

As a matter of fact,

she met this man from her home country,
that she fell in love with,

and they got married.

And to be part of something
like that is just amazing.

As a matter of fact, Alice is also
pregnant with her new baby,

and towards the end of my talk,
I wanted to say hi to Alice.

Please stand up.

(Applause)

Anyway,

I guess, for me, the experience
that I told you about is -

like, you have to come
to terms with yourself.

You have to love yourself so you can
appreciate those things in others.

If you heal yourself, you can heal others.

And -

I think if you take time
to look inside and find that little boy,

that little girl, inside yourself -

then, you treat them well -

and are you ready to look

and see a little boy or a little girl next
to you that may need some help?

Because, if you do that,

it's just

the greatest feeling in the world.

Thanks.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)