Once upon a time, Dolph Lundgren played one of cinema’s most notorious (and notoriously overplayed) villains: Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. It was a truly memorable performance, not only for Lundgren’s imposing physical presence (amplified not by his actual size, but by the contrast of his physique with that of Sylvester Stallone, who is actually on the short side) but for the pervasive over-the-top Reagan-era Cold War caricature of Soviet stereotypes. Lundgren, of course, was entirely new to the film scene in 1985, so Drago was a pretty impressive debut. Lundgren went on to starring roles in Masters of the Universe and Red Scorpion, and then settled into a long string of supporting roles and B movies.

Recently, Lundgren’s career has also taken in interesting turn. Last year, he directed and starred in the straight-to-DVD Missionary Man, about a Bible-toting biker anti-hero—and on February 19, he has a major supporting role in the DVD release The Final Inquiry, which also features the likes of Max Von Sydow and F. Murray Abraham. Released in Italy in 2006, the film is just now making it to the American market via the Fox Faith label.

Courtesy of a national publicist, I had a chance to talk with Lundgren over the phone for a few minutes while I was in Los Angeles for a business meeting. Like me, he has found Stallone’s recent efforts to revamp and revive both the Rocky and Rambo franchises “a little surprising.” But being a relatively close friend of Stallone’s, Lundgren is aware that those characters have been “such a great part of his life”—hence the drive to salvage them from the “cartoons, remakes, and toy-based stuff” that the seminal films later spawned.

Lundgren, meanwhile, finds his own recent work likewise surprising. The Final Inquiry is essentially a film about “this rabble-rouser down in Palestine named Jesus.” Lundgren plays Brixos—bodyguard to a Roman nobleman—who was originally a “fierce warrior from the barbarian countries.” As the witness to the Christ spreads throughout the Roman Empire, Brixos “observes this new religion being born” and “is transformed” to the extent of offering the ultimate sacrifice for his fellow man.

Between this remarkably faith-driven role and his directorial effort with Missionary Man, it seems legitimate to ask: is Lundgren undergoing a sort of spiritual transformation of his own? His Brixos rubbed off on him a little? Lundgren admits that this seems to be the case, but in a more a gradual sense than with Brixos. As with most kids in Sweden, he was nominally raised Lutheran, he says. “But as you get older,” he adds, “issues of faith become more of a conscious choice… You get more interested in life and death.”

You also raise families, and that’s an influence, too. A couple of Christmases ago, he and his wife took their kids to Christmas Mass. It may have just been a tradition to him; but he “realized that to them, it means a lot.” The story of Jesus is still going strong, and still changing lives—Lundgren’s included.