Sylvester Stallone

To some he is already a legend, to others he is the ultimate hero, one thing is certain, Sylvester Stallone is now a Hollywood icon. In an exclusive interview, Yasmine Shihata spoke with Stallone at his stunning Beverley Hills home, filled with reflections of his life and art. The result is a rare glimpse into the inner-workings of an elusive, enigmatic and often misunderstood Hollywood star.
One might assume Sylvester Stallone is not a man of many words from the characters he has brought to life in the last thirty years; characters famed for the physical rather than verbal expression of their emotions. However a rendezvous with the man himself reveals a very different story. Though his physical presence is just as powerful off screen as it is on, it’s the intensity of his intellect and eloquence of thought that throws the hardest punches. Behind the face that many doubted would succeed on the silver screen, lies an astute and deeply analytical mind. Multi-faceted and multi-talented, Stallone is a sensitive painter, doting father and a man who obviously hasn’t let success blind him from the rest of the world and all its problems.

Stallone’s upbringing was far removed from the happily-ever-after world of his Hollywood films. He spent the first five years of his life in New York’s notorious Hell’s Kitchen. A product of an unstable marriage, he went from one foster home to another until his mother finally divorced, moving both Stallone and his younger brother to Philadelphia to live with their newly acquired stepfather.

Stallone went on to study drama at the university of Miami. However the call of the bright lights proved too strong, and just three credits short of graduating, Stallone headed for the Big Apple, to pursue his dream. The logic behind his baffling decision only became clear years later, when he was quoted saying: “Once in one’s life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived.”
However, after a good few years in New York, it started to seem that Stallone might be destined for plain old mortality. Despite acting in a few low-budget movies, and landing a role in Woody Allen’s Bananas in 1971, his facial features proved to be a hindrance, with rejection after rejection thrown his way. Not to be deterred, Stallone sat down and started to write. In three days he’d penned the now legendary Rocky. Stallone’s insistence on playing the underdog lead (the prize fighter Rocky Balboa) discouraged producers, who wanted to cast a big-name star, from buying the screenplay. Yet Stallone was insistent, even though his bank balance was barely $100, and his perseverance paid off.

Inspired by a fight between Mohammed Ali and Chuck Wepner, Rocky was finally produced on a tiny budget and went on to win the Best Picture Oscar. All of a sudden Stallone became an Oscar nominated writer and actor and the proud owner of his Best Picture Oscar. Thirty years later a framed Newsweek photograph of Iraqi children holding up Rocky posters takes pride of place in his Beverly Hills home. Rocky went on to become a five-part series, while Stallone penned another hit screenplay, which became the 1985 film Rambo. The rest as they say, is Hollywood history.

With an endless list of blockbuster movies to his credit, the actor, writer, director, producer and businessman was eager to embark on even more exciting new projects. Stallone recently launched Instone LLC, a nutrition and diet company that fulfils his vision of a holistic product line for complete health and fitness management. He has also created a new boxing-based reality TV series called The Contender, which will feature 16 would-be champions fighting for a career in the ring. The Contender will also delve into the lives of the boxers, so viewers can, as Stallone puts it, “understand the real grandeur, tragedy and triumphs of this incredible sport.”

In some ways we are all still discovering the real grandeur, tragedy and triumphs of Stallone’s life. As a devoted father, a loyal friend and a knowledgeable, concerned citizen, there is so much more to this man than meets the eye. The years ahead are likely to reveal even more of his incredible life, until then our interview below will give you a glimpse of the man behind the iconic persona.

Q: Let’s start with how you got into acting?
A: I always had an interest for the arts. I am a very physical person, but have always been in awe of beauty and art, especially when I knew I could never do something like that; so I would give credit when credit was due. In college there was a play I auditioned for and I got the part and it just felt really comfortable to act. Acting became an outlet and I think most people that want to go into acting have certain personality problems they usually work out in their acting. It really is like your psychiatrist sometimes, and for some actors if they are not acting in 3 or 4 films a year it’s really hard on them. I really believe that most gifted actors are by far the most complicated and have the most emotional difficulties. That’s what makes a great actor; Sean Penn and Robert DeNiro these are great actors that are very complex, they have a voice that will only be shown through a character that is very interesting.

Q: Do you feel that that is how you are?
A: Sometimes I do, I tend to be more outgoing than a lot of people think I am. That’s why I like to direct more than act, because I don’t feel the need to always act or I would emotionally fall apart. Of course being a movie star has great benefits, but in the real world what are you doing? I mean in our world is a world of pretend, nothing is real. An actor is as important as the man whose building your house, it’s just a job, it doesn’t entitle you to be a lateral figure or something of a demigod. Actors have the same problems as everybody else if not more, believe me. They live in this wonderful world where everything is perfect but it’s a very insecure world and a very ego centred world. As an actor, you are your product, you are your world and it’s a lot of pressure. That’s very troublesome to me and I find it obstructive.

Q: But as a celebrity you also have a great impact on the world, don’t you?
A: Yes, you do have that ability to reach out and actually tell a story that has an impact on someone’s life. I think films are by far the greatest teaching media on the planet. There has always been a debate whether films influence people, especially young people, and my life has absolutely been changed by films. At 10 years old I was very thin and non athletic, I had insecurities, a broken family, everything. And at the time I would watch Hercules starring Steve Reeds, who was physical perfection. What he did in this mythology was so heroic, so noble that I thought, ‘my gosh this movie is about hero worship. It’s the humble man rising above and taking on the enemy, pulling their temples down, sacrificing himself.’ From that moment on that type of character mesmerised me and you’ve seen that in Rambo and Rocky; it’s all a manifestation of what I saw as a kid. So yes, it’s very important what you put out there.


Q: As a celebrity, do you find it necessary to attach yourself to a cause?
A: I think it’s an obligation to attach yourself to a cause that has a tremendous impact, such as health or education; I am not sure about politics. I was kind of an extravert but I didn’t know what to do with it and I found a release through acting, and even more so through writing. I was a very odd type as an actor and I didn’t come through the regular channels. A lot of actors come from prestigious acting colleges and work their way up through the stage or small art films and eventually are nurtured and discovered by critics. And then you have performers like myself who just happened. I went to New York right after college where I spent years and years being very poor, learning how to be incredibly rejected. It’s one thing to be told ‘we have no jobs’ but when you are an actor or performer you sit down and they look at you and they say ‘nah’. But that’s the game and some actors use it as fuel and some become bitter and self-destructive. By the time an actor makes it to the top, if they have gone through all the channels it’s pretty tough. They take the beat and sometimes they over react, by thinking ‘I will pay everyone back’. So it’s a balancing act really.

Q: When did you get into the movie industry itself?
A: The first movie, which I think is pretty important, was Lords of Flat Bush in 1972, where I played this motorcycle guy. Then I had a couple of other small parts in 1974, then painfully I thought I would never achieve my goals as I was always playing the smaller parts such as the aggressor, the mugger, the bully etc.

Q: Were you physically built up by that time?
A: Yeah I was pretty big. If I walked into a room you would say, ‘this is the bad guy’, and Richard Gere is the good guy. There was a movie with myself, Richard Gere and Robert DeNiro and right away they said ‘you are pretty big, you are the bad guy and you’re the brains (pointing at DeNiro)’. When you’re a physical type of actor, you’re always typecast, so that’s why I wrote Rocky. I thought, ‘ok, maybe I can play a guy who physically one would assume is just a tough, negative, nasty man, but by the end of the film one realises you can’t judge a book by its cover. Deep inside Rocky is a very gentle soul and he wants to be in love and that’s all he cares about.’ So if I didn’t write Rocky I would’ve never gotten that type of role. That type of script just didn’t exist and it was a case where invention was a necessity. Writing was never a passion of mine, nor was I extremely good at it, but I think if you have an ear for dialogue then that’s more important for movies than being able to write extraordinary novels. There is a difference between conversation and dialogue, it is really an art form and the more you can get down to the fine lines of interaction, the better it is.

Q: Were you known at the time you wrote the script for Rocky?
A: Oh no, not at all. I was a stranger coming in, they thought it was a very foolish, disastrous idea, but that was the moment that defined the rest of my life. I think a lot of people have those moments where it’s like, ‘I can sell a script and make a lot of money’ (that’s the smart way), or you can do it the stupid way which is not sell the script and demand that you are in the film when you are a nobody. Then you pray that somebody is as crazy as you are. At the time all the odds were against me; people didn’t know me, I was not a sex symbol, the script was about boxing and women hate boxing and boxing movies never made any money etc. Yet they took a chance on me and it was a success and that’s why I am here today. I don’t think that happens very much anymore, people aren’t willing to gamble anymore.

Q: So who was it that actually took the chance on you?
A: It was United Arts Studios, and it only took 28 days and 1 million dollars to produce and the rest is history.

Q: Did you secretly know that this was a great film?
A: Oh no, not at all. I knew it was an emotional movie, but we were up against incredibly great big films and our movie wasn’t a big film. It was a little dark but had a good story, made with very little money. And by the way in the history of film, every boxing movie had lost money, boxing movies were made in the past to defy censorship rules. In the 40s and 50s movie producers made boxing movies to be able to show sweaty men in little shorts in sort of sexy scene. But I wrote a boxing script because I believe life is a fight on every level and boxing is a great metaphor for being overpowered, taking the pain and coming back. There are two great symbols in sports: fighting and racing. I believe everything in life is a race or a fight, about overcoming challenges. The day you stop fighting, someone is going to take what you have, that’s not being vicious it’s just the way things are.

When I made the movie Rambo, it became very political although it wasn’t intended to be. The first Rambo (First Blood) was really a story about how the government sometimes takes young men, turns them into machines and sends them out to kill. And then when the fighting is over they have no use for them anymore, so I saw First Blood almost like a Frankenstein movie, where they create a monster who then turns against the people that created him. Yet since Rambo came out at a time when Regan was in politics, the movie turned into a political symbol for right wing America. I always tried to explain that Rambo is a reject, he walked away from America, he lives in the jungle in Thailand, he doesn’t want to be part of it, he’s America’s lost son. Rambo was there always as an independent, but he was made into an enemy of the poor, he was a war machine and when negotiations fail you sent in Rambo to destroy and that was totally wrong. Rambo was alienated by his own country and always lived outside of its borders, so he was America’s drifter, that’s why that character might come back again. I’ve always liked that character because it had some political overtones. It is hard to write scripts like that because they need to be based on some realism, you can’t just write them like other straightforward scripts.

Q: How did you transition from action films to other types of films?
A: When I first started, there were adventure films that had good chase scenes but no real action films. Then Rambo came along and the first cut was three hours long and had Rambo talking all the time. And then we said ‘why don’t we have him speak at the beginning and end and have the rest of the film just action’, where we have people talking about the main character but not him talking about himself. Originally action heroes didn’t talk very much, and then Arnold Schwarzenegger came in did his style and then Bruce Willis and others did theirs. So Rambo became a strong silent type of action movie, which you don’t see that much anymore. It’s almost a genre in retreat, because a lot of new actors don’t want to do that type of movie.

Q: Did you get typecast by doing action films?
A: Yeah, but it’s not a bad thing, seriously. Very few actors have a career that lasts very long. If you have 15 years of success, that’s a real achievement. And the really good thing about a genre is that audiences come to see the leading actor. For example people used to go to movies to see John Wayne and then Clint Eastwood, expecting to see them in that role. On the other hand, some actors don’t have a genre to fall back on, if a part is not so great. For example, Jim Carry will always have an audience in comedy, and so will Steve Martin so they wouldn’t want to jump out of that genre. Whereas in a movie like James Bond, the leading actor grows old and then has to take father figure or commander type roles.

Q: Why did you make the transition from action to other films?
A: I thought it would be a nice change after doing action films for so long, to pull back and do something like Rocky. You see Rocky was never really an action film, three minutes of the movie are fighting scenes, and the rest is all dialogue for two hours. For my transition I thought of Cop Land, and decided to put on weight for the role to really transform myself. And just doing that transition was very important for my soul. I have a lot of respect for actors like Sean Penn and Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino that have never done the same role. But action films are not easy, as you must speak with your body. It’s extremely difficult, very tiring, very draining and sometimes dangerous. Although some people dismiss action stars as secondary actors, the truth is if you do action and take it very seriously and put yourself in uncomfortable, dangerous situations for months, you take pride in it and hope it’s appreciated as an art form (and it usually isn’t).

Dramatic movies like Mystic River are my favourite type of films. The movie Driven that I did was an excellent project; very symbolic of life as a race and we might do a producers cut of the movie. Get Carter was a wonderful experience, it’s about a man who sold his soul and just wants a chance to redeem himself, so finally he uses violence to do something positive. The key is finding a good writer for a movie, because a good script is like a good song, when it works it just hums. A good script is like a work of art; instead of a novel with 500 pages it’s about 105 pages where you have to tell a story about a few characters, where everything has to be precisely picked out.

Avenging Angelo was a black comedy film I did with Anthony Quinn, right before he passed away. It was a real pleasure to do because I played a lot of tough guys but this character was a tough guy in a comedic role. So it was good to use the reputation of “the action guy” to my advantage, as I knew it really works. It’s like Analyse This if DeNiro hadn’t played all these gangsters it wouldn’t have been as funny to see him in a comedic role. The same thing was true when Client Eastwood did Unforgiven; that’s pretty much what we did and it was a lot of fun to do. Another movie I’ve done is Spy Kids, where I play the toy maker; audiences have seen me as Rambo and then they say ‘oh god he’s a toy maker’! Normally in Spy Kids the bad guy is gentle.

Q: Do you enjoy working behind the scenes?
A: Oh yeah, if anything I would have liked to have done that more, I’d rather be behind the camera than in front of it really.

Q: Would you consider doing a project in the Middle East?
A: Yes, definitely. I think projects in the Middle East don’t always have to be about political situations; I think it would be great to do a love story set in the Middle East. I heard that the Arab movie and television industry is based in Egypt, so we would be happy to work there and just do human stories that are not necessarily political or religiously driven. You see if you strip away political and religious differences, you find out that what all human beings want in their life is to be loved. When I make movies, I would like to uncover what people would do differently if they could come back again and do their life over. These are the stories I would like to do; these are the kinds of stories that transcend every language, religious and political barrier there is.