An actor, screenwriter, and director who became an overnight star when he wisely negotiated the starring role in his own screenplay of Rocky (1976) rather than selling the rights to the story for a bundle of money. Since Rocky, Stallone has become the highest paid actor in Hollywood, receiving as much as $12 million per picture. His career, however, has been a roller coaster ride of huge hits and stunning disasters. As an actor, Stallone has relatively little range because his voice is capable of little more than the growl of a latter-day tough guy, but his swarthy good looks, bedroom eyes, and impressive physique have allowed him to become both a rousing physical actor and potent sensual symbol.
In 1974 he was cast as one of the leads in the lowbudget New York–based movie The Lords of Flatbush, a film that received some good reviews; it was Stallone's ticket to Hollywood. More tough-guy roles followed in films such as The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), where, in a miniscule role, he was mistaken for a thief by JACK LEMMON. The parts weren't much bigger in Capone (1975), Death Race 2000 (1975), Farewell My Lovely (1975), and Cannonball (1976).
Unable to get a meaty role in a major movie, Stallone decided to write one for himself. The result was Rocky, a film about a boxing hopeful who triumphs against impossible odds. Several producers offered to buy the screenplay, wanting to cast a name star in the title role. In true Rocky fashion, Stallone refused to sell. Although his bank balance was reportedly $100.00 and he had a pregnant wife to take care of, the actor held fast, determined to play the lead himself. In the end, he made a brilliant deal that not only gave him the starring role, but it also gave him a large chunk of the profits in lieu of a very modest payment for the screenplay.
He ended up both a star and a very wealthy man when Rocky opened to excellent reviews and boffo box office. The storybook finish was nearly perfect when he was nominated for Best Actor and Best Screenplay by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He didn't win either award, but he was perfectly satisfied when the movie won the Oscar for Best Picture.
With his career jeopardized by two flops in a row, Rocky II (1979), which Stallone wrote, directed, and starred in, bailed him out. In fact, the Rocky movies, including Rocky III (1982) and Rocky IV (1985), have been his one consistently successful series. Stallone's work outside of the Rocky movies has been more problematic. He had major hits with his first two Rambo movies, First Blood (1982) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), but Rambo III (1988) cost more than $60 million to produce (becoming the most expensive movie ever made) and failed to make it into the black.
Other action films, including the comic book–based Judge Dredd (1995), were equally unsuccessful with the critics, and efforts to change his image rarely worked: Oscar (1991), a crime farce, and Stop or My Mom Will Shoot (1993) with Estelle Getty revealed his stunning lack of comic potential. Only Cop Land (1997), for which he gained weight and lost muscle tone to portray a small-town sheriff, received any critical praise and perhaps signaled Stallone's awareness that he needed a new image to replace the Rocky/Rambo action hero.
Unfortunately, Stallone's last two films, Eye See You (2002) and Avenging Angelo (2003), were real busts that went straight to video rentals. In the first film, with debts to Se7en (1995), Stallone plays a federal agent whose alcoholism leads him to a rehab center, where he is followed by the serial killer whom he was trailing; in the second, he makes another futile try at comedy, playing a protective Mafia type.
Stallone's biggest post-1990s blunder was to accept the role of Jack Carter in the ill-advised remake of the Mike Hodges British noir classic, Get Carter (2000). The assumption was that the action cold be transplanted to America, but, as Graham Fuller noted, the remake was more than "potentially redundant." Moreover, Stallone was under the obligation to match the performance of the young MICHAEL CAINE, whose role in the original Get Carter convinced Tony Blair that Caine should be knighted.
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1. Gilbert Andreson alias Broncho Billy and early Hollywood
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