Sylvester Stallone

Biography:

It's hard to feel sympathy for Sylvester Stallone. After all, over the years his movies have made billions, with Stallone himself taking a sweet percentage. As John Rambo he's known the world over, as Rocky Balboa he's even loved. Few actors have enjoyed such long-term success, or such iconic status. Yet Stallone still has real cause for disappointment. He did not start out wanting to be an action hero. Indeed, his acting roots are in absurdist theatre and weighty, more experimental works. Throughout his career he has taken numerous steps to distance himself from that Rocky/Rambo persona, with no joy. The public always wanted him as he was - the damaged, simple, everyman hero - and would not let him go. And Stallone, who must take his share of the blame, lacked the artistic courage to leave those sure-fire hits behind. It takes sacrifice to become a Hollywood star - and a lot more to remain one.

He was born Sylvester Enzio Stallone on the 6th of July, 1946, named after his paternal grandfather. His mother, Jackie, had wanted to name him Tyrone, after action hero Tyrone Power, but her prophetic rhyme was not to be. Besides, the young boy would soon be nicknamed Binky.

Stallone's birth, in the charity ward of a public hospital (close by to the Actors' Studio - again prophetically), was a difficult process. Weighing in at 13 pounds, he did not come easily and was indeed tugged from the womb by an intern with a pair of forceps. This drastic and rather unprofessional procedure would sever a nerve above the baby's jaw, causing his famously drooping eyelid and lip and also a speech impediment that would take years of therapy to overcome.

Jackie was an aspiring dancer, one of the Long Stemmed Roses at the Billy Rose Diamond Horseshoe nightclub. Prone to weight-gain, though, she was not as long-stemmed as others, and so spent much of her working time selling cigarettes to the club patrons. Still she was ambitious and pursued her dancing career with zeal. Stallone's father, meanwhile, Frank, was a Sicilian immigrant who'd attempted to make it as a club singer but, wrecked by a stagefright that saw him performing from behind a curtain, had moved into hairdressing and was attempting to build a business.

With Jackie struggling as a dancer and Frank pumping all his profits back into his business, there was very little money to spare. For the first five years of Sylvester's life, the family would live in a cold-water flat in Hell's Kitchen, on 50th and 10th. During the week, with both parents working, the boy would be sent to live with a foster mother in Queens, an uncommunicative woman who left him to live in his own fantasy world, thus fuelling his nascent imagination.

In later years Stallone would make much of this depressed background - it was this that connected him so forcefully and fatefully to the Rocky character - but their poverty was unusual in the family, and short-lived. Nee Labofish, Jackie's father was the highest-ranking circuit court judge in Washington (tellingly, he was also obsessed with bodybuilding and once shared a room with Charles Atlas). She did not come from poverty and, with Frank quickly building a chain of salons - J Frank's Hair Stylists - she did not stay in it for long. Once Frank Jr was born in 1950, the family were able to move to the upper-class Washington suburb of Silver Springs.

The family would live here in real comfort, in a big house with impressive grounds. Soon Frank Sr would be buying polo ponies (Frank Sr had learned to play the game when stationed as a guard on the Mexican border during WW2). Yet all was not right with young Sylvester. Painfully aware of his disfigurement and flawed speech, he reacted badly to the inevitable teasing at school - Mr Potato Head being one of his kinder nicknames. Fearing that answering back to taunts would simply lead to more insults about his speech, he clammed up, became surly and difficult, his anger manifesting itself in vandalism and fighting with other children. At home, life was no easier as Frank Sr was extremely critical of his elder son. Nothing Sylvester did was good enough and when the frustrated boy dared to answer back he'd receive the back of Frank's hand. Stallone would later reveal that his father was prone to whistling before striking his son and, when he became a big star, the clearly still traumatised actor actually banned whistling from his sets.

Terribly lonely at school, and feeling disregarded at home where the good-looking, musically-gifted Frank Jr received preferential treatment, Sylvester retreated further into his fantasy world of books and comics. At one point he even made himself a Superman outfit and wore it under his clothes. Unbeknown to the rest of the world, he had a secret identity - courageous, powerful, attractive. Unfortunately, he let his secret slip and was made to strip down to his superhero costume in front of the class. More humiliation. It must have driven him a little crazy as, at age 11, he jumped off the roof using an umbrella as a parachute, just like in the movies he already loved. He was lucky to escape with a broken clavicle.

Try as he might, Stallone could never escape for long into fantasy. The real world kept breaking in to assault him. He was still a straight F student, unable to retain academic information, suffering an ADD that probably resulted from the rickets he suffered during those poor, vitamin-deficient years in Hell's Kitchen. In fact, the real world was horrible, just an endless string of people pushing him, punching him, insulting him, telling him he was ugly and useless, aggressive and thick. Efforts were made to calm him.

He was sent to therapy, even to a religious retreat, but nothing worked. And then came another dire blow when, in 1957, his parents divorced. When Jackie left, leaving Sylvester in the hands of his hyper-critical father, the boy clung desperately onto her leg, going, as she later put it, "into convulsions". He'd actually run away to join his mother in Philadelphia, being brought back by the authorities. After a raging court battle that left both kids emotionally torn, the parental access decided upon would bring further estrangement to Sylvester, with Frank Sr and Jackie agreeing to look after Sylvester and Frank Jr in alternate years. By the time Sylvester was 16 he'd have attended 20 schools.

. Nevertheless, despite his parents' split - or maybe because of it - young Sylvester at last began to find some inner stability. When Jackie remarried to Tony Filiti, owner of a frozen pizza factory in Philadelphia (this union would give Sylvester a half-sister, Toni Ann), she found herself even better off than before. Her ambitions encouraged by her new husband, she opened a gym for women, and dragged Sylvester along with her, an immensely tedious experience for the 12-year-old kid. Tedious, that is, till his interest in movies led him, in 1958, to see Steve Reeves in Hercules (a film, interestingly, shot by Mario Bava, soon to direct the horror classic Black Sunday). Due to his grandfather, Stallone would have already been well-acquainted with the notion of bodybuilding, but in Hercules all its possibilities were revealed in Reeves' magnificent form. Here was a self-made man who was unashamedly superheroic, and his body was his costume. Stallone was thrilled and utterly inspired. Onscreen he devoured Reeves' work - Hercules Unchained, Morgan The Pirate, Goliath And The Barbarians and the rest - and began to work out at his mother's gym. Making weights out of old car parts, he pumped iron at home, too.

By the age of 13, Stallone was well on the way to creating himself. Impressively buff in a physical sense, he also began to work on his mind, religiously expanding his vocabulary by one word a day. Gradually, the taunts and fights became more rare. At Lincoln High in Philadelphia he even made the track team.

At 16, his grades still relatively poor, he began to dream of a life of adventure, the navy seeming a good ticket out. His father, though, as ever unsure of his son's ability to do anything right, nixed the idea and kept the boy under his watchful eye, employing him in his hair salons. He stood it for 6 months, then returned to school in Philly, living with his mother at 2744 Mowes Street. Even academia was more adventurous than hairdressing. Trouble was, bored by lessons, Stallone was a compulsive truant, never a good student. Finding the right school for him had always been immensely difficult.

One great opportunity would have been at Montgomery Blair, a public high school in Silver Spring where he'd have been in the same year as newscaster Connie Chung, one year behind Goldie Hawn and two behind Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, but he was transferred soon after enrolment. Eventually, at great expense running into the tens of thousands, Jackie enrolled him at the Manor High School, a private institution for problem kids run by the Devereux Foundation. Here, breaking from the past by re-naming himself Mike on entry, he'd undergo group and individual therapy as well as intensive speech therapy. No longer an outsider, his confidence would quickly grow. He'd box, fence, ride and play football for the school. Amazingly, given his history, his senior yearbook would say "Mike is one of the most popular boys in school".

. Eventually, Sylvester would graduate - a big win for the rank underdog. However, his grades were such that no college would take him. Once more Jackie would come good, seeking out the American College in Leysin, Switzerland, close to the French border, near Montreux and Lake Leman at the western foot of the Alps. Though the college was ordinarily a place for the rich and aristocratic, Jackie discovered that they were presently suffering a cash flow crisis. By offering to pay in advance and have Sylvester work as boxing coach, she won him an unlikely place among the children of the rich and famous.

For two years, Sylvester was happy in Switzerland. He made vast improvements at science, maths and history and began to excel at art and literature. He painted, wrote poems, grew to love the works of Shakespeare, Hemingway and Whitman. He joined the Social Service club and the drama group for whom he starred as Biff, son of the tragic Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman. And there was romance. Philadelphia's ugly duckling was known in the 1966 yearbook as "Studly".

In 1967, Stallone enrolled at the University of Miami as a theatre major, keen to maintain the momentum he'd built up in Switzerland. Unfortunately, several of his obsessions counted against him. Firstly, he was still a committed bodybuilder, his insecurities still forcing him to impress people with his body. His tutors found him too aggressive, too physical. He wasn't natural in way that Brando, Newman and the big stars of the day were natural. Beyond this, Stallone had fallen head over heels for the Theatre of the Absurd where Adamov, Ionesco, Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett were kings - another big no-no at the university. Rejected in drama class, Stallone began to pen his own avant garde plays, putting them on with his own troupe in garages, cellars, anywhere he could afford. He may not have impressed his teachers, but he was an underground hit with his rejection of narrative and his disruptive techniques (all very different to the films he would later produce).

Keen to follow his own path, Stallone would drop out of college just before graduation and return to New York City, where he'd rent a room at the Sutton hotel, near Times Square. Here he'd pursue his latest passion - screenwriting - devouring books on the subject, endlessly scribbling, creating himself once again. He'd write the anarchistic Till Young Men Exit where fledgling actors take a Broadway producer hostage, he'd base Sad Blues on his brother Frank's attempts to build a pop career. Nothing doing, no response. In the meantime, he'd pursue acting, attending many, many open auditions. However, being muscley and mumbling, he'd be dismissed as just another Brando wannabe, one in millions. Oddly, he'd fail to win a part in Sal Mineo's Fortune And Men's Eyes, a prison drama concerning homosexual rape, because he wasn't angry enough.

. Eventually, he would gain a part, as the minotaur in a 3-week Bronx production of Desire Caught By The Tail, Picasso's only play, written in 1941 and packed with myth, sexuality and surrealism. It would have clearly appealed to Stallone's sense of the avant garde, at one point having a bucket of ping pong balls descend onto the stage. Sadly, this was no career breakthrough. Stallone was soon unemployed and broke. Too proud to ask his parents for money, he spent time dossing in the infamous Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street, storing his precious notes and books in a locker there.

At his lowest ebb, as so many had done before him, he took a part in a porn film for $200. Beginning in a meaningful, almost Bergman-esque fashion, Party At Kitty And Stud's quickly resorted to softcore, Stallone cavorting with his girlfriend then inviting two girls and a guy to join them in a small-scale orgy. Studly was now just a stud and the world would witness his fall when, in 1976, with Rocky a massive hit, the film would be released under the hilarious title The Italian Stallion.

Still, $200 was $200. Stallone moved into a $71 a month apartment above an abandoned deli on 56th and Lexington. He worked cutting up fish in a deli in Manhattan, made and delivered pizza, even cleaned out the lions' cage at Central Park zoo. He worked as a bouncer at his own building, keeping the homeless out of the halls, and scored a job as an usher at the Baronet Theatre, where most major movies would premiere. Noticing how big the queues were, and how many disappointed punters were turned away, he began a lucrative side-line selling tickets to those at the back of the line. This moneyspinner ended, though, when, at the premiere of M*A*S*H in 1970, he attempted to flog a seat to an old guy who turned out to be Walter Reade, the cinema's owner.

The Baronet Theatre did at least provide Stallone with love when he fell for petite blonde ticket girl Sasha Czach, a Pennsylvania girl of Czech origin and an aspiring actress.

Soon she'd move in to his furniture-free apartment, giving up her own hopes of acting as she took waitressing work to support him as he wrote and pursued parts. And he would get parts, if only minor ones. He'd be an extra in Lovers And Other Strangers, a comedy drama set at a wedding starring Bea Arthur and Bonnie Bedelia and featuring Diane Keaton's first performance. He'd be spotted dancing at a club in Klute, starring Donald Sutherland and an Oscar-winning Jane Fonda, then he'd throttle a little old lady on the subway in Bananas as Woody Allen looked on.

. Onstage, 1970 would see him back to his experimental ways in Score at the Martinique Theatre on 32nd Street and Broadway. Here, crediting himself as Sylvester E Stallone, he'd be Mike, a hunky telephone repairman invited to join two married couples as they try swinging. Critics would dismiss the play as pornographic garbage, but Stallone would be singled out by Variety for being "comically lecherous". Despite the good press he'd be replaced in the film version of Score by a model-boy and would content himself with joining the experimental stage troupe The Extension. He'd make no money, but would be seen by a host of agents, producers and talent scouts. At this stage, it was his writing that was prospering. Still losing himself in classic American literature, in particular the works of Edgar Allan Poe, he'd come to master the twist-ending and made a very handy $2,500 selling scripts to the Australian-produced TV series The Evil Touch, where host Anthony Quayle would introduce the sci-fi, horror and murder tales on offer, always ending by wishing viewers pleasant dreams.

In 1972, Stallone and an actor friend, tired of being at the mercy of casting directors, decided to pool their resources and make their own film. Titled Horses, this would see the pair of them as a cowboy and an indian, returning from the grave to cast judgement on modern life. Not liking what they see, they return mournfully to the boneyard. The film itself was nonsense, and got them nowhere, but the friendship would stand Stallone in good stead. Indeed, it would lead to his breakthrough. When his friend was called to an audition for a famed acting school, he asked Sylvester to read with him. The school rejected the friend, instead asking Stallone if he would enrol with them. Having by now decided to dump the acting and concentrate on writing, Stallone turned them down, yet was near-instantly drawn back into thespianism when writer-producer Stephen Verona, who'd seen the audition, sent a telegram offering him a part in his new movie, The Lords Of Flatbush.

They'd begin filming in November, 1972, with the money running out after 5 weeks. The shoot would continue on and off for the next two years, eventually costing $400,000. Set in a blue-collar area of Brooklyn, it would concern a gang of leather-clad youths finding their way in the world, concentrating mostly on Perry King's pursuit of femme fatale Susan Blakely and Stallone's relationship with a girl he gets pregnant. Henry Winkler would also feature, again in leather, a kit he'd be wearing for some time yet in Happy Days. Interestingly, by the end off the 1970s all four of the actors mentioned would be big stars in the States.

During one of the breaks in the Lords Of Flatbush production, Stallone would make No Place To Hide, where he'd star as a college radical who must choose between his loyalty to a gang plotting to blow up skyscrapers and the love of a good woman. Also known as Rebel, it remained unreleased till 1974 and would not garner a positive critical reaction until 1990 when it was given a comedic overdub and retitled A Man Called Rainbo.

When finally The Lords Of Flatbush was completed, with Stallone credited for writing much of his own dialogue (including the renowned scene where his girlfriend emotionally blackmails him into buying her a diamond engagement ring), times had changed. In 1973, American Graffiti had opened up a new youth market and so Columbia snapped up TLOF for $150,000, blowing it up to 35mm and backing it with a major ad campaign. The film would gross a healthy $4.2 million in the States. Sadly, plans for a sequel would come to naught, as would a TV series to be based on the film. Winkler's Happy Days, though, a lighthearted series based in the same era, would be a massive hit (Winkler would later admit he based The Fonz on Stallone's character in TLOF).

Having scored another extra role as a mugger who contributes to Jack Lemmon's breakdown by stealing his wallet in Neil Simon's The Prisoner Of Second Avenue, Stallone decided to follow his Lords Of Flatbush co-stars to Hollywood. Taking off across country with Sasha and their bull mastiff Butkus in a beaten-up Oldsmobile, he rented an apartment near Mann's Chinese Theatre and looked for work. He found a little, taking one-episode roles in Kojak and Police Story, but mainly he was concentrating on writing, his main preoccupation being a script called Hell's Kitchen concerning three brothers in the 1940s, two of them hoping the other's talent for boxing will win a bright future for all of them. Sasha, in the meantime, became his full-time aide and secretary, the couple marrying in December, 1974.

Throughout 1975, they'd be kept going by the money Stallone received for Hell's Kitchen from producers John Roach and Ron Suppa.

He'd make very little for playing enforcer Frank Nitti opposite Ben Gazzara and John Cassavetes (and Flatbush co-star Susan Blakely) in Capone, or the macho Italian thug-driver who runs over his own track crew to win points in the post-Rollerball exploitation flick Death Race 2000. He'd get even less for his violent cameo in Farewell, My Lovely and an appearance in the controversial slave pic Mandingo that hit the cutting-room floor. These hardly brought succour to an actor who'd been rejected for parts in Serpico, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon and Rollerball itself. Worse would come when he missed out on Stay Hungry, the bodybuilder part being nabbed by the then non-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. When Sasha fell pregnant, things were looking bleak.

. But not for long. Stallone had earlier attended a closed-circuit screening of Muhammad Ali's fight with the near-unknown Chuck Wepner. It was really one of the great heavyweight mismatches, with Ali expected to pummel Wepner into submission in a couple of rounds. Yet Wepner, lacking in skill but not heart, refused to go down and lost only on points. Stallone was hugely impressed, identifying wholly with this plucky underdog, and set about turning the event into a screenplay. This he'd take to Gene Kirkwood, head of script development for producers Bob Chartoff and Irwin Winkler . Kirkwood liked it, but not the ending which saw the hero Rocky Balboa take a dive. Stallone and Kirkwood would then work on the script together, the finale becoming ever more glorious.

Kirkwood would urge Chartoff and Winkler to watch The Lords Of Flatbush in the hope that they might find parts for Stallone. They met with the young actor and he presented them with his script for Hell's Kitchen. Having decided to take it, they called him in again, to Stallone's embarrassment. He was forced to admit he'd just sold Hell's Kitchen to John Roach and Ron Suppa. However, he did have Rocky. This they liked even more. Taking the script to United Artists they were asked to replace Stallone with a name actor. James Caan was mentioned. The producers, along with Stallone, refused to budge and so, though still permitted to make the film by UA, they had to do so on a vastly reduced budget - just $1.25 million. Beyond this, Chartoff and Winkler would have to personally cover any overspend. This was a rare demand, but UA had pumped much of their money into another production, Martin Scorsese's New York, New York, seemingly a much less risky proposition than Rocky.

The deal was agreed and all corners would be cut. Stallone and director John Avildsen would take small fees but a cut of the profits. A good but cheap supporting cast would be found, including Burgess Meredith and Talia Shire (both recent Oscar nominees, for Day Of The Locust and Godfather Part II respectively).

Stallone's father would play the bell-ringer, Frank Jr's music would be used, budding photographer Sasha would take the publicity shots, even Stallone's dog Butkus would be employed. Stallone himself would train for four months with former Oakland Raiders star Carl Weathers. During filming, in early 1976, he would be extra-intense, watching every detail. The crew, famously, would come to hate him.

. As it happened, UA got it wrong. New York, New York would bomb, while Rocky would race past the $100 million mark, with its sequels grossing over a billion dollars. For publicity, Stallone was sent across country, giving personal interviews in small towns everywhere. The tale of how he'd fought against UA to keep the title role became legend, he was the little guy who fought the evil machine and won. Dammit, he was Rocky. Nothing was made of Stallone's real victory. The disfigured boy with the speech impediment and ADD had had uber-critic Roger Ebert describe him as possibly being the new Brando. The Academy were impressed, too, nominating Stallone as Best Actor alongside Robert De Niro, Peter Finch and William Holden, as well as for his screenplay. He wouldn't win, but Rocky was named Best Picture of 1976, beating Taxi Driver, Network, Bound For Glory and All The President's Men.

His life was now changing. Sasha gave birth to son Sage Moonblood and the family moved to Coldwater Canyon into the former home of comedian Ernie Kovacs. Stallone appeared on numerous chat-shows, keen to show the public that he wasn't the loveable lunk-head they'd seen onscreen - he was a writer. Unfortunately, this was not what the public wanted to hear. They wanted him to be Rocky and they wanted a piece of him. Huge crowds followed him, he was punched by one fan (a woman) and sued by another. Quickly the Stallones moved into a fortified home with armed guards in Pacific Palisades.

Trouble would now rear up around Hell's Kitchen, with the producers suing Stallone for stealing the film's premise to make Rocky (stealing from himself, indeed). Stallone would make the budding athlete in the movie a wrestler, retitle the film Paradise Alley and go into pre-production at Universal. Sasha, his longtime work companion, would be shut out. She even had to curtail a new career as a photographer to look after Sage. Stallone, it seemed, could not be described as a New Man.

While working on Paradise Alley, he took the lead in F.I.S.T, written by Joe Eszterhas (later to find notoriety with Basic Instinct and Showgirls) and Norman Jewison, maker of In The Heat Of The Night who'd passed over Stallone for Rollerball. This was loosely based on the life of Jimmy Hoffa, head of the Teamster union, with the young idealist Stallone gradually losing his integrity. Having learned from the Rocky experience that the crowds love a happy ending, Stallone would rewrite heavily, eventually getting a co-credit, and fight with Eszterhas and Jewison over the film's finale. Jewison would win, the Hoffa character would disappear, as in real life.

Stallone would now be off to New York to film Paradise Alley. Here the tabloids would catch him out with co-star Joyce Ingalls, causing Sasha to file for divorce for the first time. Stallone would win her back, but there was a big furore in the press, made worse by the relative failures of F.I.S.T and Paradise Alley. The latter in particular brought critical grief, with Stallone being panned for his writing, directing, acting and his novelisation.

Stallone was already busy filming Rocky II. As John Avildsen had wanted to darken the sequel, making Rocky a junkie, Stallone had taken over completely. Shooting would begin in October, 1978, and Rocky, mercifully free from heroin but needing money to finance Adrian's hospital treatment, would be goaded into a rematch by Apollo Creed. This time the budget would be $8 million, the take $79 million. Stallone, as Rocky at least, was still big news.

In his private life, though, it wasn't such plain sailing. Sasha had given birth to a second son, Seargeoh and family life was proving too constricting for Stallone. Fame had rushed him off his feet. While in New York publicizing Rocky II he'd met Susan Anton , an actress, singer and former Miss California billed as The Next Big Thing. That year she'd had her own TV special, Presenting Susan Anton, and was starring in Goldengirl alongside James Coburn, playing a super-athlete developed for Olympic success by shadowy Euro-boffins. Stallone fell heavily and moved with the Amazonian Anton into a Malibu beach house. The tabloids understandably went mental, Sasha filed for divorce again. Yet within 9 months the relationship with Anton was over. Stallone always put work first.

Stallone's next attempt to break the Rocky spell would be Nighthawks, a New York police thriller where he played an anti-terrorist squad veteran who, along with sidekick Billy-Dee Williams, attempts to hunt down blonde bad boy Rutger Hauer (in his first Hollywood flick after achieving fame in Holland in several movies by Paul Verhoeven). With a beard and long hair, Stallone certainly looked different, and audiences weren't having it, Nighthawks taking only $14 million on its 1981 release.

It had been a troubled production from the start, with director Gary Nelson (Freaky Friday) quickly sacked and replaced by Bruce Malmuth, who'd earlier directed a segment of the political comedy Foreplay - coincidentally John Avildsen's last job before Rocky.

. Stallone would now move on to Europe, Hungary in fact, where he'd film Escape To Victory with celebrated director John Huston. Set during WW2, this would see POWs, coached by Michael Caine, taking on Nazi professional footballers, the game being designed to divert Kommandant Max Von Sydow's attention from an escape attempt. Despite the presence of such soccer greats as Bobby Moore and Pele, the movie would be flawed by its absurd action sequences, many of them seeing goalie Stallone flying through the air and suffering bone-crushing impacts with the muddy ground. Goalkeeping films will quite clearly never rival boxing flicks as a cinematic genre. And Stallone would have saved himself a severe onscreen bruising had he organised his defence and taken command of his penalty area. It was schoolboy stuff.

Despite the pasting he received during filming, Stallone did at least win back his wife, persuading Sasha to join him in Hungary. He also discovered some of the realities of Communism, his immigrant patriotism becoming all the stronger. This would reveal itself in full force in his later productions.

Back in the US, with Nighthawks and Escape To Victory both duds, Stallone was forced to again shelve his long-dreamt-of Edgar Allan Poe biopic and get back to the business of myth- and money-making. Well aware of Hollywood's bottom line he returned to Rocky, this time taking on a ferocious beast of a challenger in the shape of Mr T. With its fine fight sequences, excellent villain and pounding Eye Of The Tiger soundtrack, it would be a mighty success, the first sequel to gross more than its original, and become 1982's second biggest movie, behind Spielberg's ET. Stallone was back, and this time the only controversy involved the eight-and-a-half foot bronze statue of Rocky he donated to the city of Philadelphia. The city's leaders didn't want it, particularly not at the top of the steps in front of the Art Museum, where it was placed in the film. But residents campaigned and the statue was eventually placed outside the Spectrum sports venue. Over the years it would be noticeable how many visitors to Philly chose to run up the Museum steps and be photographed in frenzied celebration, like Balboa. Come 2006, the statue would finally be moved to the Museum steps - but at the bottom, not the top. The city's snobbery was compromised, but still prevailed. Getting to the top of those steps may well be Rocky Balboa's final triumph.

1982 would actually be an immense year for Stallone, as his other film was also a big hit. This was First Blood, based on David Morell's 1972 novel where an unappreciated Vietnam vet goes on a killing spree.

It had been in development for years, intended initially as a vehicle for Steve McQueen. But now Stallone's appeal in foreign markets allowed finance to be raised by Carolco and Orion came on board. Stallone rewrote to make his character, John Rambo, more likeable, and off they went into the Canadian wilderness to shoot another action classic. Kirk Douglas, originally signed to play Rambo's old commander, left as soon as he realised they hadn't beefed his part up, as promised. For his part, Stallone suffered burns, knifewounds and broken bones, but still played a blinder as the ex-Green Beret with post-traumatic stress who fights off fascistic establishment bully-boys (while being careful not to kill any cops).

. First Blood would be Stallone's first non-Rocky hit. Where to go next would be tricky. He'd written a script about Marlon Brando and nerdy Wally Cox sharing a flat in New York in the 1940s, where he intended to play Brando opposite, maybe, Dustin Hoffman. This would come to nothing, as would The Bodyguard, where he would have gone mental after failing to protect his employer's wife and child. A TV version of A Streetcar Named Desire would also go by the by, Stallone quite rightly fearing he wouldn't get a fair critical hearing under the shadow of Brando. Beyond this there was The Cotton Club, in which Stallone was slated to star opposite Richard Pryor. Famed for bugging directors with his constant rewriting of scripts, Stallone would here have been up against Francis Ford Coppola. It simply couldn't happen, and didn't.

Instead, as part of a deal with Paramount, Stallone agreed to help another actor in a Rocky-like challenge. For 5 years John Travolta had steered clear of a sequel to Saturday Night Fever. Now a run of duds was forcing him back. Stallone took over completely, writing, directing and hiring brother Frank to provide the music for Staying Alive. Entering the gym with Travolta, he buffed him up to the max, turning Tony Manero into - surprise, surprise - Rocky Balboa, as Manero fought his way from tawdry discos to Broadway success in a musical based on Paradise Lost. Manero - like Stallone in real life - would furthermore dump his loyal girlfriend for a co-star. It really wasn't good, though it did make a reasonable $64 million in the US, the audience mostly consisting of ladies wishing to see a beefy Travolta dripping with baby oil.

Worse, though, far worse, was son Seargeoh's being diagnosed with autism. Stallone would interrupt his work on Staying Alive to aid Sasha as she met with nutritionists and therapists. He would do what he could, but she was the rock here, forming a team to try to bring the boy out of his shell, giving up her work and her ambitions as a photographer. And, to a large extent, she'd match her husband's onscreen triumphs. By the age of 22, Seargeoh would be considered very high-functioning.

At work, Stallone was getting a little samey.

Turning Tony Manero into Rocky was one thing, but his efforts to improve other classics weren't working. His attempt to turn the Corleones into good guys battling corrupt cops saw him lose out on Godfather 3. Rewriting Axel Foley as a cold-blooded revenger lost him Beverly Hills Cop. His return to the screen (he'd only popped up Hitchcock-like in Staying Alive) would instead be in Rhinestone, penned by himself, where Dolly Parton would play a country singer who reckons she can turn anyone, but anyone, into a singing star. Enter New York cabbie Stallone. Will he be able to convince the tough crowds at the Rhinestone, the Big Apple's meanest C&W club? With Stallone doing all his own singing, it really was a quite extraordinarily brave choice. It was his brother, after all, who had the voice. Hadn't his father been telling him that all these years? Rhinestone would lose a lot of money.

. Worse would come for Stallone when Sasha filed for divorce yet again. This time his charm and her generous nature could not save the marriage, and they were officially divorced in 1985, Sasha winning a tabloid-boggling settlement of $32 million. Stallone, keen to stay tight with his family, would live just a few blocks away.

After Rhinestone, Stallone needed another hit and got one with Rambo: First Blood 2. Rewriting a script by James Cameron and working with a huge $30 million budget, this time he took Rambo back to Vietnam where he led a gang of MIAs to safety, despite being chased and tortured by evil Russkies. Enjoying the third highest opening ever, the movie would help to launch the Tristar company and also take on a huge political significance. Rambo would be taken as a right-wing figurehead, a symbol of gung-ho action, and President Ronald Reagan would be nicknamed Ronbo for his outrageous military escapades. Stallone himself would be tagged the "Jane Fonda of the Right", his protestations that he was apolitical being heavily undermined by his next release, Rocky IV, where Balboa visits Russia, undergoing a wintery training regime before pulverising the giant Red champion, Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren.

Appearing as Drago's girlfriend and manager would be the statuesque young actress Brigitte Nielsen. She'd met Stallone in New York just before the release of her first starring vehicle Red Sonja and the couple became lovers, Stallone becoming quickly infatuated. As it turned out, Nielsen had obsessed over Stallone since seeing Rocky at the age of 11 and had written to him many times. Leaving a husband and young son in Denmark, she'd pursued fame in Hollywood and seized her chance to hook up with Stallone. Rumours flew that she'd eventually got him by sending nude pictures of herself to his New York hotel room. And rumours persisted once the couple were married in December, 1985. She'd been seeing Eddie Murphy on the set of Beverly Hills Cop 2, it was said, and the film's director Tony Scott.

She was even accused of sleeping with her female secretary, Kelly Sahnger. Whatever the truth of the allegations, Stallone was wracked by jealousy, utterly humiliated.

. The couple were still together when Stallone made Cobra, where he played a vigilante cop battling violent maniacs (Crime, apparently, was a disease. He was the cure). But he'd separate from Nielsen in the summer of 1987, the divorce coming through the following January. She'd get a pay-out of $6 million, he'd subsequently date a long string of beauties, including gameshow hostess Vanna White, Alana Stewart Hamilton, model Devin Devasquez and, later, Jennifer Flavin, another model.

Stallone's next movie, Over The Top, would be another phenomenon. Here he'd play another trucker, this time one who believes he must win a big arm-wrestling tournament in order to keep the custody and respect of his young son. The film would reunite Stallone with Susan Blakely, co-star of his breakthrough, The Lords Of Flatbush, and would start a nationwide craze for arm-wrestling. But still it died at the box office, Stallone's own $12 million paycheck eating nearly all the gross. To wrest back his status he'd move on to Rambo III, at $58 million the most expensive film ever made. There'd be more trouble on-set, director Russell Malcahy (Highlander) being sacked, as Rambo took on the Reds in Afghanistan. But the Cold War was coming to an end, the Afghans had already kicked the Commies' arses. It was badly timed and did not deliver a profit at the US box office.

To rejuvenate his career, Stallone would now spend time inside, quite rightly believing that incarceration in a claustrophobic prison would give him a chance to both battle an evil establishment and show off those rippling muscles. Lock Up would see him as a nice con coming to the end of his sentence but stitched up by wicked warden Donald Sutherland (who'd starred over Stallone in Klute nearly 20 years before). Then would come Tango And Cash, Stallone's only attempt at a buddy movie, where he joined forces with Kurt Russell, playing narc cops falsely banged up and forced to escape to nail drug lord Jack Palance. Lock Up would be the superior film, but Tango and Cash would be the middling hit.

1990 would bring what most believed would be the final Rocky flick. Balboa, broke and suffering brain injuries (injuries miraculously cured come Rocky 6), would return home to Philly to train great white hope Tommy Morrison, eventually having to fight his young protege. The franchise's inspiration had clearly run dry, though there was the added interest of Stallone's son Sage, playing Rocky's son, getting to scream "You never spent time with me! You never spent time with my mother!" at his often absent and serially unfaithful father.

If Stallone was on a bad run, it now got worse. Oscar was based on a 1958 French farce by Claude Magnier, filmed in 1967 by French comedy legend Louis de Funes. Here it was rewritten to have Stallone as a crime boss who promises his dying father (Kirk Douglas, apparently in an acceptably beefy part) he'll go straight. Of course, it's not that easy, with director John Landis throwing all manner of silliness in straight man Stallone's way. No better would be the follow-up, another comedy, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, where Golden Girl Estelle Getty visited her cop son Stallone in LA and involved herself in his work and his love-life.

This was Stallone's lowest point yet. At the time he would attempt to explain his loss of cinematic form by saying he'd been arrogant, petty and selfish. He'd loved the Hollywood lifestyle, with its perks and flattery. He'd listened to the wrong people and, basically, lost the eye of the tiger. He'd spent too much time and energy opening the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain with Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. An honorary Cesar from the French did not help. Something serious needed to be done.

And it was done. 1993 would see Stallone's best movie in years, Cliffhanger. Directed by Renny Harlin who'd scored big with Die Hard 2, this would see Stallone as a forest ranger in the Colorado Rockies. Haunted by a terrible climbing accident, he's given a chance of redemption when John Lithgow and a gang of violent terrorists lose their stash on a mountain-top. The action was vertiginous and brilliant, Stallone finding an impressively villainous opponent in Lithgow, and the film was one of the hits of the years, a big boost for a flagging career.

Stallone's other release of 1993, Demolition Man, did not fare so well, but could not be described as a failure. Here Stallone would play a cop convicted of murder and cryogenically frozen, only to be thawed out in the 21st Century and ordered to hunt down his old adversary, Wesley Snipes, a super-crim also frozen and thawed. As sci-fi goes, it wasn't exactly 2001, but it was witty and action-packed. Stallone would move on to The Specialist where he'd play a real demolition man, an ex-CIA explosives expert hired by Sharon Stone to take out a gang of Cuban gangsters led by Rod Steiger (who'd earlier appeared in Stallone's F.I.S.T). The film would be notable for sex scenes featuring Stone and a highly toned Stallone, but it didn't really work as a thriller and certainly didn't fit with Stallone's heroic persona. There is, after all, something innately cowardly about blowing people up from a distance. Nevertheless, The Specialist would be another hit.

If his film career was back on track, Stallone's private life was about to suffer another meltdown. Having begun to date young model Jennifer Flavin, on the set of The Specialist he'd carried on an affair with photographer and former model Janice Dickinson. Famously, he'd inform Flavin their relationship was over by Fed Ex.

Next it was revealed that Dickinson had actually borne Stallone a daughter, named Savannah Rodin Stallone, two weeks before Flavin's own fateful delivery. Sylvester wasn't looking good, and he looked a great deal worse when DNA tests revealed that Savannah Rodin Stallone wasn't a Stallone at all. It was a cosmic revenge for his cold treatment of Flavin, another crushing blow to his pride. Flavin, a psychology grad, would go on to make a name for herself in the fashion world, scoring a big contract with Revlon. Stallone, meanwhile would bounce into the arms of Austrian model Andrea Weiser, and then supermodel Angie Everhart, at 25 a little older than Flavin. They'd get engaged in 1995 but would call it off just a month later, Stallone returning to a fabulously forgiving Flavin. They'd marry in England in 1997, their reception taking place at Blenheim Palace, and Flavin would bear him three daughters - Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet.

. Onscreen, Stallone would return to sci-fi with Judge Dredd, working well as the granite-jawed comic hero as he's hurled out of Mega City 4 and into the wilderness, and takes on rogue judge Armand Assante (Assante had actually appeared alongside Stallone in The Lords Of Flatbush, and starred with Stallone and Anne Archer in Paradise Alley). Next would come Assassins, where Stallone would play a hit man competing with young turk rival Antonio Banderas over both the champion hit-man title and Julianne Moore. Then there'd be Daylight, a throwback to Seventies disaster movies, where a disparate group of citizens get trapped in New York's Holland Tunnel and cabbie Stallone leads them to safety. All three of these pictures were expensive to make, and all three were considered disappointments.

Come 1997, Stallone was again in a contrite mood. At a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival he claimed to be moving away from action films. He wanted to make movies, he said, "that stick in the memory a little longer". Beyond this, he apologised for the "random, senseless violence" of the work he'd done in the last 10 years. He despised it, he said, and had only done it for the money. "I think when art becomes a job," he added "it is no longer art".

The reason for this extraordinary outburst was that Stallone was at last in a film that screamed out to be taken seriously. This was Cop Land, where he was credited alongside such heavyweights as Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta, playing a local sheriff in a New York suburb populated by tough New York cops. He'd like to be one of them but has poor hearing, so instead he worships them, letting them off the minor offences they commit. His problems start when he begins to suspect his idols are involved in major corruption.

It was a tough shoot for Stallone. Having for years been obsessively rigorous in his physical training, his move towards serious acting had demanded he turn to flab and he found his appearance hard to cope with. Throughout, he'd be telling everyone that he wasn't usually this pudgy, co-star Anabella Sciorra later recalling how strange it was that Stallone didn't realise everyone already knew that. To them he was Sylvester Stallone, but to him he was still that ugly, insecure boy no longer disguised in a superman body.

Sadly, Cop Land, though it won Stallone Best Actor at the Stockholm Film Festival, would not be a precursor to greater things. One film, The Good Life, a comedy mafia flick starring his brother Frank (as well as David Carradine, earlier his co-star in Death Race 2000) would be shelved when Stallone took legal action against the producers for promoting the movie as a Stallone film when he only appeared in a very minor cameo role. Another film that did get released was An Alan Smithee Film, a weak Hollywood-set comedy written by Stallone's former F.I.S.T screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, Stallone starring in a film within the film. After this there'd be the animated Antz, reuniting Stallone with both Woody Allen and Sharon Stone, where Stallone would voice a hard-working but unimaginative ant friend of Allen's neurotic hero.

Having turned down superior scripts like Frequency and Enemy Of The State (perhaps the presence of director Tony Scott put him off), Stallone now entered a run of poor work. 2000 would bring a needless remake of Get Carter where he play a Las Vegas mob enforcer who returns home to Seattle for his brother's funeral and takes bloody revenge on those involved in the death. Next would come Driven, the first film he'd written since Cliffhanger, directed by Cliffhanger's Renny Harlin. This would involve young racing drivers competing on the track and in love, with Stallone appearing as a former hot-shot driver who helps rookie Kip Pardue become both a champion and a man. It was fast-cut action slop.

No better would be D-Tox, actually shot in 1999 but shelved by Universal who certainly had a point. Directed by Jim Gillespie (of I Know What You Did Last Summer fame), this had Stallone as a cop on the tail of a serial killer. The killer actually has a personal vendetta against Stallone, and kills his girlfriend before, apparently, committing suicide. In the wake of this, Stallone hits the bottle and is sent to a special detox centre in Wyoming where everyone gets snowed in and people start to die, one by one.

D-Tox would get a very, very limited cinema release in the States. Stallone's next movie would get none. This was Avenging Angelo where mob bodyguard Stallone promises boss Anthony Quinn (in his last ever role) that he'll protect his daughter, Madeleine Stowe, from Quinn's enemies. When Quinn is murdered, Stallone must fulfil his promise and begins by trying to convince an adopted Stowe that she is indeed the biological daughter of a master criminal.

Things were looking really grim for Stallone. Having popped up in a tiny cameo in Taxi 3, he'd then appear as legendary card sharp The Dean in Shade, where Stuart Townsend conspired with Gabriel Byrne and Thandie Newton to bring him down. In Spy Kids 3-D he'd then ham it up as the Toymaker, inventing a video game to take over the world and being foiled by those pesky kids. This did at least give Stallone a scene where he gets to talk to three other characters, all played by himself.

And then it was over. Or so it seemed. Stallone had had bad runs before, but this one appeared to be terminal. A new magazine, Sly, aimed at guys over 40 and featuring Stallone on every cover, seemed an absurd vanity project, a last gasp. Only one person could save him - himself, as Rocky Balboa. And so, 16 years after Rocky V, came Rocky Balboa where Rocky, trapped in grief after the death of his wife Adrian, comes back to life when called upon to challenge Antonio Tarver's heavyweight champion. Similar to the gritty original, the movie would strike at people's hearts again, providing the 60-year-old Stallone with a major hit. With a final Rambo outing on the cards, he was back.

Interestingly, during his press tour for Rocky Balboa, Stallone claimed he didn't care if he acted again. His overriding interest now, he said, was writing. If he's true to his word (and he doesn't have the greatest record there), this opens up grand possibilities. We may finally see that long-anticipated biopic of Edgar Allan Poe. And we may, just possibly, see Stallone reinvent himself yet again. Could he turn from an action hero accused of senseless violence and right-wing politics into a well-respected elder statesman of film?After all, Dirty Harry managed it - why can't Rambo?

Dominic Wills