Sylvester Stallone (born July 6, 1946), nicknamed Sly Stallone , is an American actor, director and screenwriter. One of the biggest box office draws in the world from the 1970s to the 1990s, Stallone is an icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism. He has played two characters who have become a part of the American cultural lexicon: Rocky Balboa, the boxer who overcame odds to fight for love and glory, and John Rambo, a courageous soldier who specialized in violent rescue and revenge missions. During the 1980s and the better part of 1990s, he was one of the biggest movie stars in the world with the Rocky and Rambo franchises along with several other mega blockbuster hit films.
Stallone's film Rocky was inducted into the National Film Registry as well as having its film props placed in the Smithsonian Museum. Stallone's use of the front entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Rocky series led the area to be nicknamed the Rocky Steps. Philadelphia has a statue of his Rocky character placed permanently near the museum, on the right side before the steps.
Early life
Stallone was born in New York, New York, the son of Frank Stallone, Sr., a hairdresser, and Jackie Stallone (born Jacqueline Labofish), an astrologer, former dancer and promoter of women's wrestling. He is the brother of actor and musician Frank Stallone. Stallone's father was the son of an Italian immigrant from Gioia del Colle, in the province of Bari (Apulia, Italy), while Stallone's mother was born in Washington, D.C. of French and Russian Jewish descent.
Doctors used forceps during his birth that severed a nerve and caused paralysis in parts of Stallone's face, resulting in his signature slurred speech and drooping lower lip. Between the ages of two and five Stallone was boarded in Queens, seeing his parents only on weekends. In 1951 he returned to live with his parents in Silver Spring, Maryland where they operated a chain of beauty salons. In 1961 he was enrolled in Devereux Manor High School, a private school for problem children located in Berwyn, Pennsylvania and following graduation enrolled in a beauty school.
In the 1960s, Stallone dropped out of the beauty school after winning a scholarship for the American College of Switzerland in Leysin where he studied drama and was well received in school productions. Returning to America he enrolled in the Theater Arts Department at University of Miami for three years. He came within a few credit hours of graduation before he decided to drop out and pursue a career writing screenplays under the pseudonyms Q. Moonblood and J.J. Deadlock while at the same time taking bit parts in movies.
Career
Italian Stallion and Score
Stallone had his first starring role in the softcore pornography feature film The Party at Kitty and Stud's (1970), later re-released as Italian Stallion (the new title was taken from Stallone's nickname since Rocky and a line from the film). He was paid US$200 for two days' work. An "uncut" version of the film was released in 2007, purporting to show actual hardcore footage of Stallone, but according to trade journal AVN , the hardcore scenes were inserts not involving the actor. In 2008, scenes from Party at Kitty and Stud's surfaced in a German version of Roger Colmont's hardcore-film White Fire (1976).
Stallone also starred in the erotic off-Broadway stage play Score which ran for 23 performances at the Martinique Theatre from October 28 - November 15, 1971 and was later made into a film by Radley Metzger.
Early film roles, 1970–1975
In addition to The Party at Kitty and Stud's , in 1970 Stallone appeared in the film No Place to Hide , which was re-cut and retitled Rebel , the second version featuring Stallone as its star. After the style of Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily? , this film, in 1990, was re-edited from outtakes from the original movie and newly shot matching footage, then redubbed into an award-winning parody of itself entitled A Man Called... Rainbo , again starring Stallone, directed by David Casci and produced by Jeffrey Hilton. "A Man Called... Rainbo" won Silver Awards at the Chicago International Film Festival and Worldfest - Houston, and was featured on Entertainment Tonight along with its credited star, Sylvester Stallone. It received a Thumbs-Up on Siskel & Ebert , and was recommended by Michael Medved on the popular movie review show, Sneak Previews .
Stallone's other first few film roles were minor, and included brief uncredited appearances in Woody Allen's Bananas (1971) as a subway thug, in the psychological thriller Klute (1971) as an extra dancing in a club, and in the Jack Lemmon film The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975) as a youth. In the Lemmon film, Jack Lemmon chases, tackles and mugs Stallone, thinking that Stallone's character is a pickpocket. He had his second starring role in The Lords of Flatbush (1974). In 1975, he played supporting roles in Farewell, My Lovely , Capone and Death Race 2000 . He made guest appearances on the TV series Police Story and Kojak .
Success with Rocky , 1976
Main article: RockyStallone gained worldwide fame with his starring role in the smash hit Rocky (1976). On March 24, 1975, Stallone saw the Muhammed Ali–Chuck Wepner fight which inspired the foundation idea of Rocky . That night Stallone went home, and in three days he had written the script for Rocky . After that, he tried to sell the script with the intention of playing the lead role. Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler in particular liked the script (which Stallone submitted to them after a casting), and planned on courting a star like Burt Reynolds or James Caan for the lead role. Rocky was nominated for ten Academy Awards in all, including Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay nominations for Stallone. Rocky won the Best Picture, Best Directing and Best Editing Academy Awards.
Rocky, Rambo and new film roles, 1978–1989
The sequel Rocky II which Stallone had also written and directed (replacing John G. Avildsen, who won an Academy Award for directing the first film) was released in 1979 and also became a major success, grossing US$200 million.
Apart from the Rocky films, Stallone did many other films in the late 1970s and early 1980s which were critically acclaimed but were not successful at the box office. He received critical praise for films such as F.I.S.T. (1978), a social, epic styled drama in which he plays a warehouse worker who becomes involved in the labor union leadership and Paradise Alley (1978), a family drama in which he plays one of three brothers who is a con artist and who helps his other brother who is involved in wrestling.
In the early 1980s, he starred alongside British veteran Michael Caine in Escape to Victory (1981), a sports drama in which he plays a prisoner of war involved in a Nazi propaganda football (soccer) tournament. Stallone then made the action thriller film Nighthawks (1981), in which he plays a New York city cop who plays a cat and mouse game with a foreign terrorist, played by Rutger Hauer.
Stallone had another major franchise success as Vietnam veteran Rambo in the action adventure film First Blood (1982). The first installment of Rambo was both a critical and box office success. The critics praised Stallone's performance, saying he made Rambo seem human as opposed to the way he is portrayed in the book of the same name, First Blood and in the other films. Three Rambo sequels Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rambo III (1988) and Rambo followed. Although box office hits, they met with much less critical praise than the original. He also continued his box office success with the Rocky franchise and wrote, directed and starred in two more sequels to the series: Rocky III (1982) and Rocky IV (1985). Stallone has portrayed these two characters in a total of ten films.
It was during this time period that Stallone's work cultivated a strong overseas following. He also attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, roles in different genres when he wrote and starred in the comedy film Rhinestone (1984) where he played a wannabe country music singer and the drama film Over the Top (1987) where he played a truck driver who enters an arm wrestling competition to impress his estranged son. For the Rhinestone soundtrack, he performed a song. These films did not do well at the box office and were poorly received by critics. It was around 1985 that Stallone was signed to a remake of the 1939 James Cagney classic Angels With Dirty Faces . The film would form part of his multi-picture deal with Cannon Pictures and was to co-star Christopher Reeve and be directed by Menahem Golan. The re-making of such a beloved classic was met with disapproval by Variety Magazine and horror by top critic Roger Ebert and so Cannon opted to
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Sylvester Stallone - Biography
Date of Birth 6 July 1946, New York City, New York, USA Birth Name Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone Nickname Sly Michael (as a teenager) The Italian Stallion
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