Fifty years after “Rocky” made Sylvester Stallone a household name, the 80-year-old says his advice to people who are struggling is “you have nothing to lose” if you try.
“Rocky,” a story about a low-level boxer who got the unexpected chance to become a champion, parallels the actor’s own life from being so broke he had to sell his dog to winning the Oscar for the 1976 classic.
“What would you tell the kid who’s sleeping on the bench at Port Authority with $80 in his pocket?” Fox News’ Bret Baier asked Stallone on “Special Report” on Tuesday while discussing his new memoir “The Steps.”
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“You have nothing to lose. Seriously, you have nothing to lose. With failure you don’t get shot. There’s no firing squad,” Stallone said. “The only thing you have to lose is your peace of mind if you don’t try. At least try. You may quit halfway through, but at least say, ‘I tried.’”
Stallone said his own motto is “I tried.”
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As a broke 23-year-old backpacking through the Pyrenees in Europe in 1969, Stallone wrote in the book that a fortune-teller predicted he would find fortune by 1976, the same year “Rocky” came out.
“And she said also, ‘A woman will bring you into the circle of attention, and that was my manager, Jane Oliver, who’s the only one like who plucked me from obscurity,” he said.
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Early in his career, Stallone went by the name Mike, but decided to go back to Sylvester.
Stallone felt pre-“Rocky” that he was drifting off into “total obscurity” and thought if Humphrey Bogart could make a career with his name, then “Sylvester’s not so bad.”
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“I thought, that’s memorable because I’ve never met another Sylvester. So at least it was just another hook that maybe people would remember as opposed to Mike.”
Stallone told Baier that he decided to write his book now because he wanted his children to “understand the journey” it took to get him where he is now.
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The “Tulsa King” actor called ushering at a theater his “film school,” explaining that he would watch three showings a night on his shift and would take notes from films like “M*A*S*H.”
“I thought, where do you learn more about a film than in a theater where you actually see a reaction?”
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He said college is “very cloistered,” whereas in a theater it’s “instant enjoyment or repulsion or they leave. So, I learned a great, great deal. It’s like with a waiter – you want to learn the restaurant business? Be a waiter.”
“I learned more in a movie theater than I would imagine in college,” he said.
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Stallone also wrote that the “go the distance” speech in “Rocky” almost didn’t happen because the producers wanted to cut it.
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“They did pull the plug,” he told Baier. “And I have to say I really did lose my cool at that moment. Very upset. It was the first time I really crossed the line. I said, ‘You have to film this because this is the whole movie philosophy in a nutshell.”
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In the end, the producers gave Stallone one take to get it.
“If the camera shook, if the sound man… I was like ‘Everyone, please be on your A-game.’”
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Stallone didn’t believe he was going to win the Academy Award in 1977, and when Jack Nicolson called his name, he said he was shocked and almost “broke down.”
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“I thought, ‘No, can’t be.'”
The actor dedicated the award to all the people who, like Rocky Balboa, struggle but will always “be there” working hard.
