Sylvester Stallone’s initial moments of infancy made him an instant underdog. Complications during his birth resulted in facial nerve damage, rending his speech slurred and his face partially paralyzed. After bouncing between foster homes, Stallone settled with his mother, Jackie Stallone, in Philadelphia where his combative ways made him a human distraction in school and an old-fashioned troublemaker. During his tenure at Devereux Manor High School, his classmates selected him as “Most Likely to End Up in the Electric Chair.”
Following high school, Sylvester Stallone didn’t have the academic achievements to warrant a university education at home. Based on the success of his parents’ beauty salon business, he enrolled in beauty school before bolting to the Switzerland’s American College after obtaining a scholarship. The change in academic scenery allowed Stallone to sample the dramatic arts for the first time as an acting student. He returned to America in 1962 and continued his fine arts education at the University of Miami. On the cusp of completing his degree, Stallone departed again — this time to New York to break into professional acting and screenwriting.
Sylvester Stallone in rocky and first blood
Sylvester Stallone’s early attempts to enter the acting world were difficult, to say the least. One of his earliest efforts was 1970′s The Party at Kitty and Stud’s, a softcore extravaganza that he did strictly for the cash. He also found himself intertwined with erotica thanks to an off-Broadway play called Score, in which he had a minor role. Uncredited parts followed in Woody Allen’s Bananas and Jane Fonda’s Klute, but they offered scant exposure and barely enough to pay the bills. He had more luck after a move to Los Angeles, where he found work from Roger Corman. The B-movie mogul cast him in 1975′s Capone as a gangster and that year’s Death Race 2000 as Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, a colorful rival to David Carradine’s Frankenstein.
Another 1975 event proved to be Sylvester Stallone’s career catalyst. His attendance at the boxing match between Chuck Wepner and Muhammad Ali set his creative juices flowing and out of it emerged a script about an underdog boxer who gets his one shot to go the distance. The script very much mirrored Stallone’s own career in acting and knowing this was his one shot to make it big, he negotiated a deal that allowed him to star in the picture and make a little over $300/day while shooting it. The resulting film, Rocky, won the Oscar for Best Picture (beating Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver) while Stallone earned nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. More importantly, the film became the calling card for sports underdog movies, inspiring countless variations and a number of Rocky sequels. Across popular culture, Rocky Balboa’s training montage — which included a stop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — became legendary.
Rocky made Sylvester Stallone a full-fledged movie star, but apart from its smash sequel, Rocky II, he still struggled to find success as other characters in efforts like F.I.S.T., Paradise Alley and Nighthawks. Finally, in 1982, Stallone hit pay dirt again as John Rambo, a disillusioned Vietnam vet caught up in an internal and external battle on home soil. Like Rocky before him, John Rambo, his red headband and ample firepower became iconic pop culture symbols and another Sylvester Stallone movie franchise was born.
Sylvester Stallone in cliffhanger and cop land
Through the rest of the 1980s, Sylvester Stallone earned major hits from Rocky III (where he fought Mr. T.), Rocky IV (which saw him take on Dolph Lundgren) and a pair of increasingly violent Rambo sequels. The potent box office combination solidified him as a rough-and-tumble action icon along fellow stars (and later Planet Hollywood business partners) Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but his career was not without some serious missteps. Though his intention was to show that his screen persona could extend beyond Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, his roles as a country singer (Rhinestone), and a trucker-turned-arm-wrestler (Over the Top) were not received kindly.
In 1990, Sylvester Stallone brought Rocky out of retirement for Rocky V. Audiences weren’t pleased to see him again and the film was one of three movie disappointments to start the decade, with the others being Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. On the verge of becoming a parody of himself, Stallone made amends with the adrenaline-fueled 1993 action hit, Cliffhanger, the sci-fi actioner Demolition Man (with Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock) and The Specialist (with Sharon Stone).
Another sci-fi entry, Judge Dredd, was a setback, as was Daylight, but in 1997, Sylvester Stallone dropped his action hero persona and packed on the pounds to play a hearing-impaired New Jersey sheriff in a fight against corrupt New York City cops. Facing acting heavyweights Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta, he fared well. The film was only a minor hit and created confusion in the industry as to where Stallone was going next with his career. As a result, his volume of work dropped and films like D-Tox and Get Carter did little to salvage his bankability.
Sylvester Stallone in rocky balboa, rambo and the expendables
Following his appearance opposite Sugar Ray Leonard on the 2005 NBC boxing reality series, The Contender, Sylvester Stallone made his way out of the shadows and back into the limelight by revisiting an old friend. Feeling that the last go-around wasn’t an appropriate send-off, Stallone released Rocky Balboa in 2006 to much critical and popular fanfare. Two years later, he did the same thing by unleashing Rambo, an update to the story of John Rambo in a Burmese setting. The gritty, limb-crunching effort was also well received by fans who had come to miss the character and Stallone’s old-fashioned brand of violent action.
In 2010, Sylvester Stallone took the old-fashioned action brand and made it hip again by acting, writing and directing The Expendables, an all-star team of cinematic action stars and tough guys featuring Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. As one of the highest profile films of the summer, The Expendables reinforced Sylvester Stallone’s worth to action movie junkies and film audiences as a whole — a fitting capper of a comeback for a star who, like Rocky Balboa, was only looking for a shot some 35 years earlier.
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