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8 Sylvester Stallone Facts Even Diehard ‘Rocky’ Fans Probably Don’t Know

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 01:14 PST, Feb 2, 2016

Sylvester Stallone is a man with many facets to his character. Most famously known for his role as Rocky Balboa, his most recent Oscar nomination is for playing Rocky in the movie Creed.

Over his 40-year career, Sylvester Stallone has gone through the gamut as an unknown to a star to a has-been to being reborn in the acting world, and now being nominated for an Oscar.

But there are a number of truly unbelievable facts about the talented star that most fans probably don’t know.

1. IGN reveals that the famous sneer Sylvester Stallone puts on is due to the injuries his face sustained during his birth. An inexperienced intern used forceps to pull Stallone out and, during the process, severed the facial nerves for his lips and eyelids.

2. Sylvester Stallone was smitten with musclemen in his youth, and because he was bullied, he turned to bodybuilding as a means to protect himself. Since he had no money for weights, he made his own, pressing cinder blocks at a local junkyard.

3. Since Sylvester Stallone was such a handful and was expelled from 14 schools, his mother sent him off to an American school in Switzerland. It was at this school, American College in Leysin, that he discovered acting and earned acclaimed for his role as Biff in Death of a Salesman.

4. Sylvester Stallone’s first major role was in a soft porn movie initially called The Party at Kitty and Stud’s and later renamed to The Italian Stallion, in which he played Stud.

The reviews were pretty bad. Buzzfeed reported that Stallone did an interview with Playboy in 1978 and explained why he did the film

“I was starving when I did it. I’d been bounced out of my apartment and had spent four nights in a row at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, trying to avoid the cops, trying to get some sleep and keeping my pens and books in a 25-cent locker. I mean, I was desperate. That’s why I thought it was extraordinary when I read in one of the trade papers that I could make $100 a day. And the fact that I had to take off my clothes to do it was no big deal. There wasn’t any hardcore stuff in the movie, so what did I care? The people behind it were a group of wealthy lawyers, very, very solid, and I auditioned for them in a high-rise office building. But they came up with a turkey. The Party at Kitty & Stud’s was a horrendous film and was never released.”

5. There were a number of big changes for some of the Rocky movies before they hit the big screen. One of the craziest original storylines was that Rocky would die at the end of Rocky V!

6. The first Rocky script was written in 20 hours over a span of three days. Producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler offered Sylvester Stallone $350,000 for the script, but he wasn’t to star in it. Stallone accepted less money to ensure that he starred as Rocky but agree to a percentage of the profits. United Artists hadn’t paid up until Stallone mentioned it in a magazine interview, and the next day, they showed up on the set of his new movie with his $2 million.

7. Boomsbeat reports that Sylvester Stallone describes himself as not handsome in the classical sense.

“I’m not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren’t straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.”

8. Sylvester Stallone’s brother, Frank Stallone, is a singer/songwriter who is famous for writing the song “Far From Over” for the movie Staying Alive.

[Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images]

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