Sylvester Stallone

Season 6, Episode 601

Original Airdate: February 27, 2000

Sylvester Stallone has faced the classic Hollywood Catch-22: he has had enormous success, but cannot seem to break free from those original roles that made him famous.

Sylvester Enzio Stallone was born July 6, 1946 in New York City. His drooping eyes and slurred speech are actually due to a severed facial nerve caused by forceps during his birth. In addition, his slightly unusual first name made him especially self-conscious as a child growing up. His father was a hairstylist, and his mother was a former chorus girl.

When Stallone was six, the family moved to Maryland, and ran successful beauty salons, until his parents divorced. He then moved with mom Jackie and her new husband to Philadelphia. In the next years, Stallone proved to be a hellraiser, getting expelled from 14 schools by the age of 15. He finally landed up at a school for troubled kids in Berwyn, PA and finally excelled at something: athletics.

After school, he tried hairdressing for a time, and then won a scholarship to the American College in Switzerland, where he pursued drama while teaching physical education. Stallone had found his niche, and upon returning to the U.S., enrolled in the drama program at the University of Miami. Only a few credits short of receiving his degree, he dropped out and headed to New York to launch his acting career.

He had an interesting variety of jobs to support himself — like lion-cage cleaner at the zoo. He had the occasional small role (such as the subway mugger in Woody Allen's Bananas) — and infamously starred in a low-budget porn originally titled A Party at Kitty and Stud's. (It was renamed The Italian Stallion after Stallone became famous.)

A small part in The Lords of Flatbush convinced him to try to make it in Hollywood. He got work, but never more than a bit part here or there. Then, as fate would have it, Stallone happened to catch a fight between Muhammed Ali and a little-known boxer named Chuck Wepner. Wepner lasted fifteen rounds against Ali. Before the fight was over, the idea for Rocky was born.

He wrote the screenplay, about an underdog boxer named Rocky Balboa from Philadelphia, in a mere three days. Stallone had written the script so he would finally have a good part to play - several producers were turned off by Stallone's insistence that he play Rocky. (Studio execs wanted to cast Ryan O'Neill.) Stallone won out, and the picture was shot in about a month. Rocky was the surprise sleeper hit of 1976.