‘Lucky dog’ Sylvester Stallone, 80, on fate, insecurity and his Rocky road to success

Fifty years after Sylvester Stallone pulled off one of Hollywood’s all-time long shots with Rocky (1976), the star of the Oscar-winning film still identifies with the character who for many embodies the outsider proving all the naysayers wrong.

But he no longer claims to be an underdog.

“It would be so disingenuous to say you’re an underdog, ‘as he said from his penthouse’,” Stallone says, on a high floor of a luxury Manhattan hotel. “Yeah. Come on. I am a lucky dog.”

Stallone, who turned 80 in July, is among the most successful film stars and filmmakers in history. He has generated billions of dollars through such blockbuster franchises as Rocky, Rambo and The Expendables and portrayed some of the most memorable film characters. And he is still working, starring as mobster Dwight “The General” Manfredi in the Paramount+ series Tulsa King.

Stallone has been reliving his early years as a struggling actor-writer who somehow convinced United Artists to back his modest story of a journeyman boxer’s shot at the heavyweight championship, and even allow him to play the lead despite having little acting experience.

His memoir The Steps was published on September 29 and a fictionalised and semi-authorised version of his story, Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, will arrive in cinemas in November, with Anthony Ippolito in the starring role. (Farrelly spoke about the film with Stallone, who was otherwise uninvolved.)

Rocky, which beat Taxi Driver and All the President’s Men among others to win the best-picture Oscar in 1977, is one of those classic films that only seem to benefit from their backstory; Stallone’s own journey to the Oscars stage echoes his character’s improbable rise.

As he writes in The Steps, he was a hard-luck case, an unplanned and unwanted child who seemed to face endless discouragement right through the production of Rocky, when he feared every day on the set might be his last.

Stallone was in Manhattan to promote his book, but spends much of his time at the Palm Beach, Florida estate he shares with his wife, Jennifer Flavin, 58. Even when – especially when – he is talking about his rare fortune, Stallone speaks in a warm, rumbling, offhand manner, a kind of private street talk that suggests he doesn’t believe it all.

In 2025, he was honoured at the Kennedy Centre in Washington. His award was presented by US President Donald Trump, who had previously named Stallone, Jon Voight and Mel Gibson his “ambassadors” from an otherwise liberal Hollywood. Stallone once called Trump “the second George Washington”, but he has contributed to both Republicans and Democrats and broken with conservatives by calling for stronger gun control laws. He also condemns war, including the Iran war, as a story of sending people into a “meat grinder while the military complex is making zillions of dollars”.

“I do believe that you have to defend yourself. But to go on the offensive?” he says, adding that he would prefer not to be known as a “political figure”.

“I love the common architecture of trying to just survive. That’s noble,” he says. “To be a politician, that’s a different animal.”

Here the actor also talks about fate, insecurity and why he is probably better off for his unhappy childhood.

Why write this book?

“I was approached a few times [over the years] and the one thing I didn’t want to write about is my life. It’s this ambivalent roller-coaster ride. It’s not always the most pleasurable ride. And I thought, ‘What am I known for?’ Pulling off this minor miracle in 1976, which falls under the heading of inspiration. That’s what I want to do. Because the character was an inspiration, I wanted to tell the people how it all came to be.”

Insecurity is a great motivator

Sylvester Stallone

How hard was it to relive some of those early memories?

“It was very hard because I spent 50 years burying that stuff. And it’s like you come across a lost city, and you start to become your own spiritual archaeologist, digging down. And it’s not pretty. But I didn’t want this to be, ‘Oh, woe is me.’ Everyone has issues and a lot worse than me. I just wanted to touch on the essence because I still have this conundrum.

“If everything was really nice, maybe I wouldn’t be here, you know what I mean? If I didn’t have that insecurity which drives us. You know, insecurity is a great motivator.”

For people at your level of success, do you find they all have that sense of insecurity, that drive?

“I think so – especially the ones that are desperate to do better and constantly pushing it. For example, I don’t have to do my dialogue for another month before we start Tulsa King. I’m up every morning at 5 o’clock, studying until literally it’s like breathing. Now, that’s probably insecurity, but that’s the way I approach it.”

When was the last time you actually watched Rocky in its entirety? Did you look at it while working on the book?

“No, I didn’t. You know what I see. You’re sitting there and going through messages and somebody who’s 18 has put it on the internet or on TikTok. And how would this person relate to an 80-year-old guy? They’re not, though. They’re not relating to me. It’s that character.”

Young people know about Rocky.

“In retrospect, that to me is the greatest gift. You know, you write something – I’m just trying to get some footage on myself. I’m just trying to write something really simple. I didn’t ever expect it to be in more than one or two theatres. So all this is a tsunami of good luck. It [Rocky] tapped into something that I cannot take credit for.”

Now you have a movie about you, I Play Rocky, coming out.

“How strange is this? A movie about me being in a movie.”

What did you think of it?

“It’s fantastic. And the kid [Ippolito] did a great job. This is so odd. They usually do this when you’re dead and gone. It’s 50 years almost to the day when it came out and if he gets nominated … It’s so surreal.

“I have to give Peter Farrelly, the director [credit]. I never in a million years had any confidence this would work. But he said that to the everyday person, this is kind of a fantastic journey. Rocky is fiction, this is real. And that’s what people are holding on to.”