Fifty years after 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 actors 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 whos 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 dont get shot. Theres no firing squad,” Stallone said. “The only thing you have to lose is your peace of mind if you dont 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 whos 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 could make a career with his name, then “Sylvesters not so bad.”
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“I thought, thats memorable because Ive 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 its “instant enjoyment or repulsion or they leave. So, I learned a great, great deal. Its like with a
