Sylvester Stallone

Actor, writer, and director

• Born: July 6, 1946
• Place of Birth: New York, New York

Significance: Sylvester Stallone is an actor, writer, and director who shot to fame with the box-office hit Rocky in 1976, which he wrote and starred in. He reprised his role as Rocky Balboa in five sequels and the spin-off Creed films in addition to portraying an equally memorable character, John Rambo, in First Blood and its sequels.

Background

Sylvester Stallone was born on July 6, 1946, in New York City, New York, in the borough of Manhattan. The elder of two sons of Jacqueline and Frank Stallone, he suffered trauma during his birth that resulted in a severed facial nerve that caused a droopy eyelid and a speech impediment. His early years in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood were marked by his parents’ constant fighting as well as physical abuse and indifference. After the family moved near Washington, DC, Stallone began to act up, leading to his expulsion from several schools, and he took up bodybuilding.

Following his parents’ divorce in the 1950s, he stayed for some time with his father before moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to live with his mother and her new husband. There he eventually attended a private high school and became successful in sports such as football.

Stallone spent two years studying at the American College of Switzerland in Leysin, Switzerland, where his interest in acting was piqued. He then returned to the United States and studied drama at the University of Miami for another two years but left without earning a degree.

Entertainment Career

After a move to New York City, Stallone struggled in the early 1970s in his pursuit of an acting career, taking odd jobs at a zoo and theater to make money. He played an extra in several films, including The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker (1970), Klute(1971), and Bananas (1971), and landed his first significant role as the lead in The Lords of Flatbush in 1974. In that coming-of-age story, he played Stanley, a young Brooklyn gangster whose girlfriend announces she is pregnant. Stallone wrote some dialogue for the film, earning his first writing credit.

Stallone had difficulty finding additional parts and spent some time writing screenplays, some of which sold to television. In the mid-1970s, he wrote Paradise Alley, a screenplay about three Italian American brothers living in New York City who become involved in the world of professional wrestling. The money from the sale of the screenplay helped finance his move to Hollywood, California, and it was ultimately made into a 1978 film, which he directed and starred in.

In 1975 Stallone watched a fight between heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali and a relatively unknown contender, Chuck Wepner. Although Wepner lost to Ali, he put up a good fight. Inspired by Wepner’s passion, Stallone wrote nonstop for almost four days and produced a script about an underdog boxer determined to succeed despite all odds. He sold the script to a Hollywood studio with the condition he play the role of debt collector and aspiring boxer Rocky Balboa. The script became the film Rocky(1976), with Stallone playing its namesake character. Audiences flocked to the theater, and it was 1976’s highest-grossing film. It received ten Academy Award nominations in 1977 and won three, for Best Picture, Best Directing, and Best Film Editing.

Stallone followed Rocky with four numbered sequels between 1979 and 1990. The fifth sequel, Rocky Balboa, came out in 2006 after a lull of fifteen years and mediocre films that followed Rocky V, which had flopped and caused Stallone to lose favor in Hollywood. Stallone wrote and starred in each movie. He also directed all the sequels except Rocky V.

Meanwhile, in 1982, Stallone first appeared in his other most well-known role as John Rambo, a troubled Vietnam veteran, in First Blood, which he cowrote. It too was highly popular and followed by four sequels featuring and cowritten by Stallone: Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rambo III (1988), Rambo (2008), which he also directed, and Rambo: Last Blood (2019); he also directed Rambo.

Throughout the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, Stallone appeared in several other films, including Cliffhanger (1993), which he helped write; The Specialist (1994); Assassins (1995); Cop Land (1997); Get Carter (2000); Driven (2001), which he also wrote; and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003). Several of them were flops, and it was not until Rocky Balboa and Rambo hit the theaters that he regained his earlier popularity as a pop culture icon and bankable star. He cemented his status with The Expendables (2010), which he cowrote, directed, and starred in. A blockbuster action thriller with an all-star cast playing covert mercenaries, it was followed by two sequels in 2012 and 2014, both of which he cowrote. Finding continued success in the action genre, he had a leading role in the Escape Plan series (2013–19).

In 2015, Stallone reintroduced his Rocky character in Creed, which sees the aging Balboa mentor the son of his former rival, Apollo Creed, and pass the baton to the next generation. He received a 2016 Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and an Academy Award nomination; on top of this critical acclaim, the film became a financial success. In 2017 Stallone appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 as Stakar Ogord/Starhawk. The following year, Stallone contributed as a writer and actor to Creed II (2018). 2018 also saw Stallone co-write and star in Rambo: Last Blood, which Stallone at that time said would be the final entry in the Rambo series.

Stallone remained prolific into the 2020s. In 2022 branched out into television and made his streaming television debut in the series Tulsa King, which starred Stallone as a New York mafioso who relocates to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to build a criminal empire there. While he did not appear in or write Creed III (2023), the third entry in the Creed series, Stallone remained involved as a producer.

In 2023, Sly, a documentary about the life and legacy of Stallone, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Thom Zimny directed the film, with Stallone serving as an executive producer. The film follows Sylvester Stallone's life through his rough upbringing in Manhattan, his early struggles as an actor, his journey into an action filmmaker, and his rise to stardom over nearly five decades. Sly was released on Netflix in November 2023.

Impact

In the early 2020s, Stallone became the first actor in US history to star in number-one box office hits across six decades in a row. For more than a decade, Stallone vowed that each Rocky film was his last and then broke that vow to bring out “one more” story of resilience and courage, mirroring his own rags-to-riches life. His films, which include many autobiographical details, made him a Hollywood legend and a beloved star among generations of filmgoers. In 2011 he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. A statue of Rocky in Philadelphia is a popular tourist attraction.

Personal Life

Stallone married actor Sasha Czack in 1974. They had two sons, Sage (1976–2012) and Seargeoh (b. 1979). After his first marriage ended in divorce in 1985, Stallone was married to actor Brigitte Nielsen from 1985 to 1987. In 1997 he married model Jennifer Flavin. They have three daughters: Sophia, Sistine, and Scarlet.

Stallone’s interests include sculpting and painting. He has exhibited his works at such venues as the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice, France.

Bibliography

Crump, Andy. “When ‘Rambo’ Was a (Relatively) Grounded Character Study.” TheHollywood Reporter, 17 Nov. 2018, www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/why-rambo-is-an-oscar-movie-compared-sequels-1162195. Accessed 16 Mar. 2020.

Hibberd, James. “Sylvester Stallone Gets Candid About Career, Regrets, Feuds: ‘I Thought I Knew Everything.’” Hollywood Reporter, 7 Nov. 2022, www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/sylvester-stallone-interview-rocky-rambo-tulsa-king-1235254384/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.

Lidz, Franz. “Rocky the Article.” Sports Illustrated, 12 Nov. 1990, vault.si.com/vault/1990/11/12/rocky-the-article-as-the-bell-sounds-for-round-5-of-the-rock-opera-sylvester-stallone-dreams-of-a-box-office-knockout. Accessed 9 Apr. 2020.

Plaskin, Glenn. “Stallone’s Long ‘Rocky’ Road.” Chicago Tribune, 4 Nov. 1990, www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-11-04-9004010395-story.html. Accessed 16 Mar. 2020.

“‘Rocky Isn’t Based on Me,’ Says Stallone, ‘But We Both Went the Distance.’” The New York Times, 1 Nov. 1976, archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/movies/bestpictures/rocky-ar.html. Accessed 16 Mar. 2020.

Stallone, Sylvester. “Sylvester Stallone Feels Robbed of an Ownership Stake in ‘Rocky’: ‘I Was Furious.’” Interview by Claudia Eller. Variety, 23 July 2019, variety.com/2019/film/features/sylvester-stallone-rocky-ownership-stake-1203275639. Accessed 16 Mar. 2020.

Ward, Tom. “The Amazing Story of the Making of ‘Rocky.’” Forbes, 29 Aug. 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/tomward/2017/08/29/the-amazing-story-of-the-making-of-rocky/#6a314532560b. Accessed 9 Apr. 2020.