Saturdays with the Stars: Sylvester Stallone

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we spoke about Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who dominated the box office throughout the 1980's with violent, explosion-heavy action thrillers.  This month, we're going to talk about a man who, if you were alive during Arnold's heyday, you pretty much always referenced him with.  While not as successful (something he would later admit), there was a time these future friends would have a combative, sometimes shockingly so, relationship in the press, which would be good for both of their careers, but would, for this star, feel like a step down to the type of roles he once felt capable of playing.  This month's star is Sylvester Stallone.

Stallone's early childhood honestly reads like one of his movie's, with his mother being a famed wrestling promoter (and astrologist) and his father Frank a hairdresser.  During delivery, Stallone had to be removed from his mother with forceps, which pinched a nerve that would cause the lower side of his face to be seen in a snarl, something that would become the actor's signature look in years that followed, and caused him to have a ready-made tough guy aesthetic.  Stallone, unlike Schwarzenegger, was a fairly good student, briefly attending Notre Dame, before he started to work in movies as an actor.

Stallone's early career is famous to anyone who read tabloid newspapers, but he appeared in a soft-core porn film called The Party at Kitty and Stud's (later titled Italian Stallion, capitalizing on Stallone's famous nickname), and got extra work in movies like MASH, Bananas, and Klute before writing himself the role that would make him a legend, as Rocky Balboa.  In the 15 years that followed, Stallone would become a household name, associated with both Rocky and Rambo, as well as occasional forays outside of the action hero ring that weren't nearly as successful.

Stallone today is not a particularly well-regarded actor, in many ways reducing his talent (he is, lest we forget, a two-time Oscar-nominated actor, something that Schwarzenegger never came close to achieving) to an asterisk compared to a series of crap (and political choices like endorsing Donald Trump) that would make him unpalatable to a new generation of moviegoers.  This month we're not going to ignore the unsavory aspects of Stallone's celebrity, but we're also going to look at what might be neglected in his filmography, with me seeing one of his most critically-acclaimed roles, as well as watching a Rocky film I've never caught before, and somehow introducing myself to John Rambo for the first time.