Reflecting the resolve shown by Rocky Balboa, the titular character of his monumental Rocky film series, Sylvester Stallone has overcome much hardship throughout his life. Most memorably, the decorated actor and writer suffered a considerable loss when, in 2012, his eldest son, Sage, passed away from coronary heart disease at the age of 36.
Famously, Sage starred alongside Stallone in Rocky V as Balboa’s son, Robert. In the 2023 documentary Sly, Stallone discussed how the warm on-screen father-son relationship was unfortunately dissonant with reality.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Stallone sighed when asked if Rocky V drew inspiration from his real-life aspirations and experiences as a father. “I try to take something that actually is what I wish I had done in real life, but I wasn’t able to do that in reality. And so quite often I would do it theatrically, magically … A lot of that is true,” he added.
In the 1990 movie, Rocky and Robert establish a strong bond through a shared passion for boxing. “Unfortunately, you put things before your family. And the repercussions are quite radical and devastating,” Stallone noted, lamenting the pressures of a high-octane acting career.
While there seems not to be a bad bone in Stallone’s body, his aspirations in the movie industry have often led to difficult choices and hardship in his personal life. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, while he scraped by on a pittance working odd jobs to fund his acting ambitions, Stallone found himself well-acquainted with poverty.
Speaking to Playboy in 1978, two years after his breakthrough in the first Rocky movie, Stallone revealed th at his odd jobs included cleaning out lion cages at Central Park Zoo and working as an usher at a cinema. He also took on an acting role in a pornographic movie called Party at Kitty and Studs.
“I was also starving when I did it,” he reflected. “I’d been bounced out of my apartment and had spent four nights in a row at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, trying to avoid the cops, trying to get some sleep and keeping my pens and books in a 25-cent locker. I mean, I was desperate. That’s why I thought it was extraordinary when I read in one of the trade papers that I could make $100 a day. And the fact that I had to take off my clothes to do it was no big deal. There wasn’t any hard-core stuff in the movie, so what did I care?”
“You know, when you’re hungry, you do a lot of things you wouldn’t ordinarily do, and it’s funny how you can readjust your morality for the sake of self-preservation,” Stallone added pensively.
During his early years as an aspiring actor, Stallone found comfort in a tight bond with his pet dog named Butkus. Tragically, during a financial nadir, he was forced to sell the dog. “Years later, when things got even worse, I had to sell him for $40 in front of a 7-Eleven store because I couldn’t afford food,” Stallone wrote in an Instagram post in 2017.
“Then, like a modern-day miracle, the screenplay for Rocky sold, and I could buy and buy him back, but the new owner knew I was desperate and charged me $15,000,” he recalled. Fortunately, at this stage, Stallone’s pockets were more than capable of footing the bill. “He was worth every penny,” Stallone commented.