Sylvester Stallone, 78, has revealed he deliberately omitted the most brutal chapters of his childhood from his memoir to avoid a “pity party.”
The “Rocky” star made the admission in a new interview, where he unpacked decades of physical abuse, emotional neglect and near-total abandonment. “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.
Stallone traced the violence back to his early years with his father in Maryland following his parents’ divorce. He described the man as volatile, with explosive hands that taught the boy survival instincts fast. “The next thing you know — wham! He had very big hands. You just learned to duck a little bit,” he recalled.
One assault never faded. Stallone said his father dispatched him to buy bread before church, but he returned with nut bread after getting distracted by 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. The actor was left sprawled in the street. “Really, it’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable.”
The cruelty extended beyond beatings. Stallone stated his mother never embraced him — a claim his brother would back up. “My mother never — and my brother will attest — hugged me. Ever, ever,” he shared. His father offered affection almost never, save for one frozen moment when Stallone was about nine. After working around his father’s horses, he fell asleep in the car. His father placed the boy’s head on his knee and rested his hand on top. “And I never got over that,” Stallone admitted.
Before the Maryland years, there was the boarding house. Stallone said he was sent to live among strangers at a very young age, with his parents visiting 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 explained.
That deprivation forged a particular armor. When asked if it made him tough, Stallone replied, “In the wrong way, yeah, it did. It made me very tough.” The cost was steep: he said he did not encounter what he considers “real, real, real, real true love” until roughly age 70, with his wife and children. “And that’s a big pity. It really is.”
The actor eventually confronted his father. In his 40s, Stallone told him, “I wish you and I could be the same age for three minutes.” When the father asked why, Stallone answered, “Because I’d like to give you some of your own medicine, and you would know what it’d be like to have your a– kicked.” The father, then 68, challenged him to fight. “He was ready to go at 68 years old,” Stallone noted.
Stallone linked that inherited ferocity directly to his most iconic creation. “So, when people go, ‘Where do you get the ferocity to play Rambo?’ Genetic,” he said.
Off screen, Stallone has five children from three marriages. He wed Sasha Czack in 1974; they divorced in 1985 and had two sons, Sage and Seargeoh. That same year he married “Rocky IV” co-star Brigitte Nielsen, splitting in 1987. He has been married to Jennifer Flavin since 1997, with whom he shares three daughters: Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet.
The original “Rocky,” which Stallone wrote and starred in, earned 10 Oscar nominations and won three Academy Awards including best picture, launching one of Hollywood’s most durable franchises.
Stallone is currently promoting his Netflix documentary “Sly,” which examines his life and career.