Actors - Sylvester Stallone

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Sylvester Stallone

	Actors - Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Enzio Stallone (born July 6, 1946 in New York City) is an American film actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. He is often referred to by his nickname, "Sly". He achieved his greatest successes in a number of action films, notably the Rocky
and Rambo
series.

Career

Stallone was born to Frank Stallone Sr. (a beautician who was an immigrant from Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily) and Jacqueline "Jackie" Labofish, an American astrologer of 1/4 Russian Jewish descent. In the 1960's, Stallone attended the University of Miami for 3 years. He came within a few credit hours of graduation, before he decided to drop out and pursue an acting career. Stallone's career began with an appearance in a soft-core pornographic film called Party at Kitty and Stud's
. The film was originally hard core and depicted sexual acts, but the repackaging was censored to have scenes end just before any hard core action would take place. After Stallone's later success the film was re-packaged as The Italian Stallion.

Stallone's first film roles were very small. He played a subway thug in Woody Allen's Bananas
(1971) and had a brief appearance in the Jack Lemmon vehicle The Prisoner Of Second Avenue (1974). He had a starring role in the cult hit The Lords Of Flatbush (1974). In 1975 he was featured in Farewell, My Lovely
, Capone and another cult hit Death Race 2000
. Stallone also appeared in guest shots on the popular television series' Police Story and Kojak.

Stallone did not gain wide fame until his starring role in the smash hit Rocky
, (1976), awarded the Academy Award for Best Picture. Stallone had written the screenplay and had tried to sell it to a Hollywood studio for years, finally succeeding, and with the rider that he would play the lead. Rocky was nominated for ten Academy Awards in all, including two for Stallone himself, for Best Actor and for Best Original Screenplay. In addition to winning Best Picture, Rocky won for Best Director and Best Film Editing.

Rocky cost about US$1.1 million to make, and grossed about US$225 million worldwide. Stallone had been a lifelong boxing fan and used "Bayonne Bleeder" Chuck Wepner's surprising performance in his 1975 title bout with Muhammad Ali as partial inspiration for the plot.

Stallone's subsequent attempts to expand his range floundered and he was forced to return to the Rocky franchise a number of times (1979, 1982, 1985, 1990 and 2006) to pay for the flops. This link with boxing later extended to hosting reality TV show The Contender. He tried his hand at directing as well as writing with Rocky II
, III
, and IV
. With the monetary success of the Rocky films, Stallone gave professional wrestler Hulk Hogan his first mainstream exposure, as the character Thunderlips in 1982's Rocky III
, two years before Hogan hit it big as the champion of the World Wrestling Federation.

Stallone has also directed and co-written several other films, such as Tango and Cash and the lamentable sequel to Saturday Night Fever
, Staying Alive
. His other early successes were as John Rambo in First Blood
, released in (1982), and its sequels, Rambo: First Blood Part II
, and Rambo III
. His last major success as a co-writer came with 1993's "Cliffhanger."

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Sylvester Stallone ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Sylvester Stallone; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Actors - Sylvester Stallone

Career

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay