His War Stories Are Legion

Everyone has a dream, a vision of how they want to be remembered. Sven-Ole Thorsen had a dream back in his native Denmark when he was about 18 years old--it was to become the biggest, baddest man on Earth.

“My vision,” recalled Thorsen, now 55, “was that one day, when I got buried, my friends would lift up the coffin and the bottom would go out and my body would fall to the ground and they would look at me and say, “He’s a big guy.”

So, Thorsen began working out, and in six years he had bulked up from 181 pounds to 320 pounds. He won the Strongest Man in the World contest--lifting 544 pounds when the record, at the time, was 524. He lifted cars, pulled trains, held airplanes and bent iron bars around his stump-sized neck.

Then he came to Hollywood and, for nearly two decades, has achieved an unusual but important niche in film, portraying big, bad dudes in a stream of action movies like “Conan the Barbarian,” “The Running Man,” “Lethal Weapon 3” and “Kull the Conqueror.”

Whenever directors need a sweaty, snarling brute to swing a club, wield a broadsword or draw down on movie stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Steven Seagal or even waif-like Leonardo DiCaprio, they don’t have to look farther than the now-280-pound, 6-foot, 5-inch Dane with the graying, trim beard and arresting gaze.

“I’m an expert with axes, swords, knives, spears and bows and arrows,” Thorsen said over lunch recently at Il Tiramisu in Sherman Oaks, leaving one to wonder where one learns to become an expert with an ax.

His one-page resume, with print as small as a phone book’s, lists more than 40 feature films and 16 television shows in which he has appeared throughout his career--a list, it should be noted, that features a Who’s Who of directors like John McTiernan, Paul Mazursky, John Woo, Robert Zemeckis, James Cameron, Walter Hill, Sam Raimi and Richard Donner.

His latest celluloid incarnation can be seen in Ridley Scott’s blockbuster Roman epic “Gladiator,” in which the burly Scandinavian, accompanied by four 500-pound Bengal tigers, goes up against leading man Russell Crowe in a climactic fight to the death inside the Colosseum as thousands of spectators roar their approval.

While filming that scene, Thorsen became so focused on his choreographed moves with Crowe that he didn’t notice one of the tigers.

“The producer came up to me afterward and he’s pale,” Thorsen recalled. “He asks, ‘Are you OK?’ Then he says, ‘Let me show you the video.’ And, we see where the tiger hits my knee, hits my hip and claws my shoulder.” Thorsen said only the 50 pounds of gladiator gear he was wearing for the scene prevented serious injury.

“They got really nervous and maybe were afraid I was going to sue them,” Thorsen said with a smile, “but I just said, ‘Montecristo No. 2’ [referring to his favorite Cuban cigar]. Ten minutes later, they gave me a box of Montecristo No. 2s.”

With the Hollywood action genre undergoing a historic metamorphosis as famous muscle boys like Arnold, Sly and Bruce slip into middle age, one might think that men of brawn like Thorsen would also be slipping into the twilight of their careers, replaced by jazzed-up digital effects.

Think again.

“They are never going to do away with human personality, and Sven has plenty of that,” said director John Milius, whose bloody 1982 adventure epic “Conan the Barbarian” served as Thorsen’s introduction to movies. “That is why he has been around so long. There are plenty of big guys--and there are always going to be--but very few have his kind of personality.”

Thorsen believes that today it takes more than mere explosions, gunfights, car chases and karate kicks to keep audiences interested.

“I think that moviegoers are becoming smarter and people want a good story,” Thorsen said in a deep-throated accent not unlike that of his longtime cinematic nemesis and good friend, Schwarzenegger.

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Thorsen broke into movies when martial arts and bodybuilding were becoming popular and films about barbarians caught the public’s fancy.

He met Schwarzenegger by judging bodybuilding events and, in 1978, while visiting Long Beach for a martial arts competition, Schwarzenegger introduced him to Milius.

“Based on my size in those days--I was 320 pounds--[Milius] got so excited he wrote a part for me in ‘Conan the Barbarian,’ ” Thorsen said. “I played James Earl Jones’ right-hand man. I take care of all the snakes in the picture. That was my first contact with the movie business.”

The film was shot in Spain, Milius recalled, and he asked Thorsen to recruit some of his muscle-bound buddies to play combatants on screen.

“They were my personal bodyguards,” Milius recalled with a laugh. “They were my men. They were the ‘Great Danes!’ I ate every meal with them and had the best time ever. It was total barbarity.”

Milius noted that the years have somewhat tamed his friend’s fierce appearance. “Now, he looks very professorial,” the director said. “He doesn’t look like the giant Viking killer that he once was. Instead, he looks like the guy with a PhD unearthing the Viking ship.”

But lest you think Thorsen has lost his edge, Milius adds, “He can still eat Russell Crowe and spit him out for lunch.”

Since “Conan,” Thorsen has been in steady demand, in films like “Red Heat,” “Terminator II,” “Harley Davidson & the Marlboro Man,” “Hard Target,” “Last Action Hero,” “George of the Jungle” and “End of Days.”

One of his more memorable scenes was as a Swedish gunslinger who has a confrontation with DiCaprio in the 1995 western “The Quick and the Dead.”

“I am saying to [DiCaprio], ‘I’m only gonna wound you, kid.’ He says, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ And, then we have our first shootout and he wounds me. I go down and he now brags about how good he is, how fast he is, things like that. Meanwhile, I’m reaching for my gun, trying to get him while he’s celebrating that he shot me. He says, ‘No, no, no. You don’t touch that gun. You want more?’ So, that is a fun scene.”

Some of his more memorable roles: In “Red Heat,” Thorsen and Schwarzenegger grapple inside a sauna, then crash through a window and tumble naked down a snowy embankment. In “Kull the Conqueror,” he’s the mad king who crosses swords with Kevin Sorbo. In “Pink Cadillac,” starring Clint Eastwood, Thorsen is the guy with the “Death Before Dishonor” tattoo on his arm. And, in “Mallrats,” he plays a security guard who chases the kids.

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Because his reputation precedes him, Thorsen said he occasionally gets tested on his toughness by the stars in a film.

While filming the 1994 action film “On Deadly Ground,” Thorsen recalled how Seagal, a martial arts expert himself, called him over one day and said, “Let’s see what you can do. Why don’t you kick me, OK?” Thorsen begged off, but Seagal persisted. “No, no, kick me.” So, Thorsen kicked him in the stomach and Seagal brushed it off and went back to work.

“When it came to film the fight, there is a scene where he had a piece of ivory and he hits me on my throat harder than he is supposed to,” Thorsen said. “I was knocked out three or four seconds. It took my breath away. I was supposed to work two more weeks [on the film], but the producer came up to me and said, ‘Now, you know, we saw that fight on the dailies and it looks so severe, your character is out of [the rest of] the movie.’ ”

One actor who did get the best of Thorsen was, oddly enough, Rene Russo. In “Lethal Weapon 3,” the stunt coordinator told Thorsen to wear a cup for a fight scene involving the actress.

“I’m kind of saying, ‘That’s OK, I’m not putting a cup on. It’s a woman, right? I can deal with that.’ But she hits me, and I had to go on my knees. [The stunt coordinator] is, of course, screaming, ‘I told you to put a cup on!’ ”

Thorsen said “Gladiator” was one of his most demanding roles.

“I played Tiger, a retired gladiator who works with four tigers,” he said. “The first week there, I rehearsed 10 hours a day and I wanted to go home. It was too much. I couldn’t brush my teeth, I was stumbling around on my feet. I couldn’t really do the job. I felt, ‘This is too much for me.’ I felt that I am gonna fail. But then the skill from my martial arts days kicked in, so after four weeks of rehearsing I was ready.”

Thorsen’s private life has often been as colorful as his movies.

Married and divorced three times, he has two sons, ages 32 and 22, by his first wife. He dated singer-actress Grace Jones, and his love of fine cigars also made him a regular on boys’ night out at Schwarzenegger’s former restaurant, Schatzi on Main, in Santa Monica.

His future plans? Thorsen said he wants to produce a script he has owned for years called “The Last Viking,” based on a book by a Danish author named Joseph Petersen. He is also in talks with director Bille August to play a serial killer who preys on Stockholm, noting that August once made a documentary about him while attending film school.

And, if the role calls for an expert with an ax, Thorsen is ready.