Sylvester Stallone has shared new, unusually detailed accounts of an abusive and emotionally barren childhood, much of it spent living with his father in Maryland, according to a new interview with The New York Times.
Stallone said he deliberately kept some of the harshest stories out of his book because he did not want readers to feel sorry for him. “I didn’t put a lot of stuff in the book because I didn’t want a pity party … but it was insane,” he said.
After his parents divorced, Stallone lived for a time with his father in Maryland, whom he described as volatile and physically abusive. “The next thing you know — wham! He had very big hands. You just learned to duck a little bit,” Stallone said.
One incident stood out. Stallone said his father sent him to buy bread before church, and he came back with nut bread after running into friends. “And he kicked me in the stomach and hit me and like laid me out, got in the car, and went to church,” Stallone said, adding that he was left lying in the street. “Really, it’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable.”
Years later, in his 40s, Stallone confronted his father directly, telling him, “I wish you and I could be the same age for three minutes.” When his father asked why, Stallone said he told him, “Because I’d like to give you some of your own medicine, and you would know what it’d be like to have your ass kicked.” According to Stallone, his father, then 68, was ready to fight him on the spot.
Stallone tied that intensity to one of his signature roles. “So, when people go, ‘Where do you get the ferocity to play Rambo?’ Genetic,” he said.
Stallone also said his mother never showed him physical affection. “My mother never — and my brother will attest — hugged me. Ever, ever,” he said. His father was similarly undemonstrative, though Stallone recalled one exception: around age 9, after working around his father’s horses, he fell asleep in the car and woke to find his father had rested his head on his knee with a hand on top of it. “And I never got over that,” Stallone said.
Earlier in the conversation, Stallone described being sent to a boarding house as a young child, where his parents visited only once a month. “I just was raised by strangers, you know, in a boarding house. And it became sort of a natural environment. And my parents were really never nurturing, so this was actually a bonus compared to where I was living,” he said.
Asked whether that upbringing made him tough, Stallone said, “In the wrong way, yeah, it did. It made me very tough.” He said he did not experience what he called “real, real, real, real true love” until around age 70, through his wife and children. “And that’s a big pity. It really is,” he said.
Stallone went on to write and star as Rocky Balboa and later played John Rambo, becoming one of Hollywood’s most recognizable actors. The original “Rocky” received 10 Oscar nominations and won three Academy Awards, including best picture.
Stallone has five children from two of his three marriages. He married his first wife, Sasha Czack, in 1974; they divorced in 1985 and had two sons, Sage and Seargeoh. He married “Rocky IV” co-star Brigitte Nielsen later in 1985, and they divorced in 1987. He married Jennifer Flavin in 1997, and they share three daughters, Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet.
