Dolph Lundgren says his affairs didn’t cost him his marriage. Instead, they earned him a steep monthly cheating fee.
Keep reading to learn more.
After years of dating famous faces including Grace Jones and Paula Barbieri, Dolph Lundgren married jewelry designer Anette Qviberg in 1994.
The couple welcomed daughters Ida and Greta, and while the action star continued acting, the Swede has said raising his children took priority over chasing blockbuster roles.
“I had 10 years in Europe when my priority was to raise my kids outside of New York and Hollywood,” the Rocky IV said, according to People.
When the marriage ended in 2011 after 16 years, Lundgren, 68, returned to Los Angeles, where he set out to rebuild his Hollywood career.
Looking back on their 16 years together, the actor says infidelity didn’t end the marriage – but it did come at a price. According to Lundgren, that chapter unfolded during a difficult period when acting opportunities became less frequent and his income began to shrink.
Costly decisions
Speaking about that period during an appearance on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, Lundgren made a candid admission about the choices he made while away from home.
According to the Masters of the Universe actor, he had multiple affairs during his marriage, and he claimed his wife’s response wasn’t to leave him.
Instead, he says, she found another way to deal with it.
She made him pay.
‘$60,000 a month’
Explaining how the arrangement worked, Lundgren told Bensinger that after leaving Hollywood to raise his family, his earnings had fallen dramatically between 1997 and 2007.
“My earnings instead of getting 100, I got 10 per movie,” he said, claiming his income had dropped by around 90%.
Even as his income plunged, Lundgren explained that the family’s spending didn’t shrink to match.
“The overhead stayed the same, we got more expensive,” Lundgren said, before claiming, “The more I cheated on my wife, the more she wanted to spend my money. It’s a classic.”
He alleged that Qviberg knew about his affairs but was more concerned with maintaining their lifestyle.
“She didn’t want to come with me on locations or anything, so she kind of knew that I had a affairs but I don’t think she’d cared as long as I paid the bills,” he told Bensinger.
“I paid the bills and bought her a new Ferrari or whatever it was and so it was that kind of relationship. I mean it wasn’t like we were arguing she was a very nice woman, I mean I just think that the overhead was huge,” he said.
Lundgren went on to allege that his ex-wife was spending around $60,000 a month on “just her credit card.”
The financial arrangement, Lundgren suggested, continued until the marriage eventually came to an end.
Career revival and cancer
After the split, Lundgren shifted his focus back to Hollywood.
His move coincided with a Hollywood comeback fueled by the success of The Expendables, reuniting him with Rocky co-star Sylvester Stallone. Lundgren appeared in all four films in the action franchise, most recently in 2023.
His career was back on track, but another challenge was waiting off-screen.
The actor later revealed he had been diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2015 and had six tumors removed before the disease returned in 2020, while he was filming The Expendables 4 and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
“At that point, it started to hit me that this is kind of something serious,” he said, adding that the doctor recommended he “probably take a break and spend more time with your family and so forth.’”
He has since shared that he is now cancer-free.
‘Wife was running a flawless business’
More recently, however, it wasn’t his health or career that had people talking. His comments about his marriage quickly ignited debate online.
One X user wrote: “he could at least get a divorce if he wants to f*** around. That should cost him less,” while a second commented: “the wife was actually running a flawless business model and I will not hear otherwise.”
The star who has a master’s degree in chemical engineering, was a Fulbright scholar at M.I.T., speaks seven languages, and is a third-degree black belt in Kyokushin karate.
“Why would you even want a relationship like that?” another added of the actor, who in 2023 married Emma Krokdal, 39 years his junior.
What do you think of Lundgren’s arrangement with his ex-wife? Please let us know your thoughts and then share this story with others so we can get the conversation going!
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