ROCKY ROAD

Action Star, 80, Admits Dark Secret Behind Legendary Body

The Oscar-nominated actor opened up about the “terrible price” he paid to maintain his chiseled physique.

Sylvester Stallone is opening up about the extreme measures he took to carve out one of Hollywood’s most famous physiques.

The 80-year-old Rocky star admitted that he developed an eating disorder and used steroids while pushing his body to its limits during the height of his action-movie career.

“It got to the point where I became bulimic. You heard it here first,” Stallone told the New York Times in an interview published Saturday.

Stallone became a household name after writing and starring in 1976’s Rocky, playing a down-on-his-luck Philadelphia boxer who gets a shot at the heavyweight title. In 1977, he secured two Oscar nominations for the film: Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay.

As the franchise grew through the 1980s, so did his public profile and chiseled frame.

Stallone said his fixation intensified while filming 1982’s Rocky III, when he claimed his body fat dropped to 2.6 percent.

“I couldn’t hold anything down. Or I didn’t want to keep it down because I became so obsessed with staying at that point of fitness, literally an obsessive body-worship kind of thing,” he said.

The actor said his increasingly muscular build started as part of the characters he was creating.

He described his body as his “armor,” explaining that Rocky Balboa began as a “very smooth, very normal-looking guy” before he decided the character would become “a bit more vain.”

The transformation became even more extreme when Stallone took on another signature role in 1982: John Rambo.

“You’re playing a warrior, so you’d be a little bit more animalistic,” Stallone said. “So I started to think: Design your body like a jaguar, a cat. Not big like Arnold, but more feral and aggressive and very limber and athletic.”

But what began as a way to transform into his characters physically eventually became an obsession with maintaining the extreme physique.

Stallone admitted that steroids were also part of achieving a body he said could not be maintained naturally for months at a time.

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“And nobody does it without additives and drugs, period,” he said. “I don’t care what they say.”

He said he cycled the drugs “six weeks on, six weeks off,” adding that maintaining his physique took a “terrible toll.”

Stallone’s disclosure comes as research continues to challenge the stereotype that eating disorders primarily affect women.

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About one in three people struggling with an eating disorder is male, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. The organization also cites research finding that 22 percent of men in one study engaged in muscularity-oriented disordered eating behaviors, including eating certain foods, taking supplements, and using anabolic steroids to gain size.

Stallone said he eventually felt some relief while filming the 1997 crime drama Cop Land, which required him to abandon the hyper-muscular action-hero image.

“It wasn’t until I did Cop Land, when I had to play the weakest guy in the room—partially deaf, overweight—that I felt somewhat liberated,” he said.

The father of five said decades of punishing his body have also left him with extensive injuries.

“I’ve abused my body,” Stallone said, revealing he has undergone nine back operations, two shoulder operations, and three neck fusions.

“Everything is held together with baling wire, but I still want to stay in good shape.”

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Despite remaining visibly fit at 80, Stallone said he no longer sees his physique as the armor it once was.

“I’m sort of fit, but I take a lot of pills to keep going,” he said. “It’s come at a terrible price.”

Looking back, he said he would make at least one major change: “Let someone else carry the banner and don’t do your own stunts.”

The revelations arrive ahead of the release of Stallone’s memoir, The Steps, on Sept. 29. The title nods to the Philadelphia Museum of Art staircase made famous in Rocky.

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Tamilore OshikanluContributor

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