Does Sylvester Stallone really need any introduction at this point? The Academy Award-nominated actor and prolific Hollywood icon is one of the most successful artists alive today (per MIT’s Pantheon database of memorable people, he’s apparently the third most-famous actor in the history of mankind). From “Rocky” and “Rambo” to “Tulsa King” and “The Family Stallone,” the Italian-American actor, now in his late 70s, overcame adversity to leave an indelible impact on the entertainment industry, his life rivaling even the greatest underdog tale he ever wrote.
And yet, though Stallone may feel as distinct in our minds as his deep baritone, there’s likely much you may not know about the legendary multi-hyphenate artist. Before he invited Paramount+ into his home and then allowed a Netflix documentary, “Sly,” to be made about him, his story was largely told through brief interviews and anecdotes. The actor doled out personal revelations seemingly at random. We’ve gathered some of the most interesting facts about his time in the spotlight (as well as the years just before) to give you a clearer picture of the man in the boxing ring than ever before.
His pre-Rocky career consisted of various menial jobs
Before he was an actor, Sylvester Stallone worked several survival jobs like most aspiring artists — though his pre-“Rocky” career was significantly more varied than others. While studying at the American College of Switzerland, he allegedly held down numerous odd jobs to pay for tuition, room, and board. Though he wasn’t at his “Rocky IV” peak of physical fitness yet, he used his broad build to work as a bouncer on campus. When he wasn’t dealing with drunk college kids, Sly is said to have sold hamburgers and taught gym classes.
This episodic career didn’t slow to a steady pace when he finally moved to New York City. While trying to break into the entertainment industry, he had various jobs far from the limelight, including cleaning out the lion cages at the Central Park Zoo. This particular job apparently involved withstanding the large felines’ 15-foot urine streams, with the actor telling Playboy magazine in 1978 that he quit after just a month as a result. “‘This is marvelous, Sylvester,'” he recalled thinking to himself at the time. “‘You’ve gotten to the point in your life where you’re now making $1.12 an hour to get pissed on by a lion.'”
Arguably the closest he came to a career in cinema before his big break was when he worked as an usher at Walter Reade Cinemas, though his time there was short-lived. Not satisfied with the pay he received helping customers, he began scalping tickets on the side for extra cash — which ultimately resulted in him mistakenly offering his services to the theater owner. He was fired.
He fought hard to keep himself in the ring for Rocky
By the mid-1970s, the writing was on the wall for Sylvester Stallone. In an era when average Italian-American actors were getting passed over for pretty much everything but mob flicks, Stallone couldn’t even land a role as one of Michael Corleone’s (Al Pacino) 300-plus nameless Italian wedding guests in “The Godfather.” No one was going to give him a career — so he’d have to make one for himself.
With no prospects coming from writers, Stallone resolved to craft his own opportunity. In 1975, he penned the screenplay for “Rocky” in just four days, after which he gave it to none other than “Happy Days” star Henry Winkler. Having remained friends after their time in “The Lords of Flatbush,” Winkler helped get the script in front of network executives at ABC — and they ultimately chose to produce it as a TV film. But when the network wanted to remove Stallone from the project, he urged Winkler to withdraw the script from contention. Fortunately, another Winkler read “Rocky.”
Producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff loved the “Rocky” screenplay so much that they offered Stallone $360,000 for the rights to turn it into a major motion picture. Once again, however, Stallone faced pushback from studio execs when he insisted he’d play the title role. Eventually, all parties agreed to allow Stallone to act for union wage, which gave him $80 a day for acting. In the end, his deal resulted in about $35,000 for the entire shoot — screenplay included.
He could’ve been Superman
A big-budget, big-screen version of “Superman” went into production in 1976-’77, just after Stallone became a huge star with “Rocky.” He was in consideration to play the Man of Steel, but director Richard Donner ultimately didn’t think he was right for the part, as well as wanting to go with a relatively unknown actor (the role ended up going to Christopher Reeve, and the rest was history). But it was the rejection of another major player that may have really sealed Stallone’s dismissal: his intense, sensitive-tough guy performance in “Rocky” earned him favorable comparisons to Marlon Brando. Brando had been cast in “Superman” as Jor-El — and he reportedly refused to be in a movie with someone who might upstage him.
As a major movie star for more than 40 years, Stallone has almost landed plenty of roles. On a 2014 appearance on “The Tonight Show,” Stallone revealed that he auditioned to play Han Solo in “Star Wars.” He could instantly tell that director George Lucas wasn’t interested and bowed out, telling filmmakers that he “would look like crap in spandex, leotards, and a ray gun.” In 2006, Stallone told Ain’t It Cool News of “several films I missed out on and wished I’d done.” Those films: the 1978 Vietnam War homefront drama “Coming Home” (which earned an Oscar for Jon Voight), the 1985 Amish country police mystery “Witness” (which landed Harrison Ford an Oscar nomination), and the dark and twisted 1995 thriller “Se7en.”
He was once on track to be a top polo player
Despite his rather gritty break into acting, Sylvester Stallone came from affluent beginnings, and he once played a sport far less bloody than boxing. On the polo field, a middle school-aged Sly shined on horseback, immediately taking to it. By age 13, just two years after his first match, Stallone was a nationally ranked polo player competing in the top echelons of his age division. In the Netflix documentary “Sly,” his brother Frank Stallone Jr. states confidently that the future “Rocky” star was primed for a promising athletic career as a professional polo player — that is, until his interest was cut short by a traumatic experience involving his late father, Frank Stallone Sr.
According to Sylvester Stallone, Frank Sr. spent the better part of a polo match berating his son from the stands loudly for what he perceived to be poor treatment of the horse on Sylvester’s part. Supposedly unsatisfied with Sylvester’s response, Frank Sr. then stormed the field in the middle of the game to essentially assault his son. “I pulled the horse up to get ready for another throw, and [Frank] comes out of the stands, grabs me by the throat, throws me on the ground, takes the horse, and walks off the field,” said the younger Stallone. “I laid there and I went, ‘I never want to see a horse again in my whole life.'” He eventually played in an exhibition match alongside his father when he was 40 — but that too was a contentious affair.
He physically transformed his body for Cop Land — but not in the way you’d expect
Especially after “Rocky IV,” Sylvester Stallone was the poster boy for the Hollywood bod. The outrageous muscles he and actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger packed on for the action classics of the ’70s and ’80s became genre-defining attributes, and they were arguably precursors for the dramatic body-building transformations of Marvel actors like Chris Pratt and Kumail Nanjiani. For the 1997 crime drama “Cop Land,” Stallone wanted to get as big as possible — but muscles were the last thing he was after.
Following a string of terrible roles (including in the film “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot,” which he was famously fooled into taking by rival action star Schwarzenegger), Stallone had finally landed a promising dramatic character as a New Jersey sheriff fighting corruption within his own district, playing opposite Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro. This wasn’t Lt. Cobra, but an aging police officer far from the action and even further from Stallone’s usual type.
Never one to shy away from a challenge, he set out to gain as much fatty weight as possible by eating French toast, cheesecake, and pancakes. Though he wanted to cover up his abs and lose the definition in his arms, director James Mangold especially wanted Stallone’s face to look noticeably different. In total, he gained somewhere between 30 and 50 pounds. His performance wound up being one of the best-reviewed of Stallone’s career.