Sylvester Stallone’s iconic Rocky is celebrating its 48th birthday.
The movie about struggling boxer Rocky Balboa was released in November 1976, making a huge splash, going on to spawn a raft of sequels and becoming a much-loved Hollywood classic. It also gave Stallone his big break. While he had been working as an actor in the years before playing the boxer, it was Rocky that made him a household name.
Close to 50 years later the actor – now 78 – is still going strong in the industry, with his Paramount+ crime series Tulsa King thriving.
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But it hasn’t always been the easiest road for Stallone, who has battled some health problems along the way.
Paralysis from birth
Stallone suffered some paralysis as a result of a mishap when forceps were used to deliver him in 1946, leading to his distinctive look and way of talking.
In his Netflix documentary Sly, the actor said he had been "born with this snarl".
He shared that his mother Jackie went into labour on a bus, adding: “Somebody was smart enough to get her off the bus, they carried her into a charity ward. And that’s where I was brought into the world via this accident which kind of paralysed all the nerves on the side of my mouth. So I was born with this snarl.”
Seven operations
The actor has said that he never quite recovered after his 2010 action thriller The Expendables, where a fight scene left him with a fractured neck and dislocated shoulders.
Stallone revealed on his reality show The Family Stallone that he ended up needing seven operations after the stunt, which saw him being tackled by co-star Steve Austin. He later needed to have spinal fusion and had a metal plate inserted into his neck.
“I did stupid stuff,” he said. “I was directing Expendables and, like an idiot, I’m doing take 10, take whatever, and I remember one slam and I could actually feel one bang.”
The star said he “never recovered”. “After that film, it was never physically the same,” he said. “So I warn people, ‘Don’t do your own stunts’.”
Risking brain damage
The star once revealed that he lost his memory and suffered "debilitating physical effects" as he worked to make sure his body fat was very low as he prepared to play Balboa again in Rocky III.
He told the Wall Street Journal: "My entire breakfast would be maybe two oatmeal cookies made with brown rice and 10 cups of coffee because I wanted to keep my body fat down to 2.8%. I was forgetting my phone number.
"I was eating just tuna fish. My memory was shot, it was completely gone. I was getting all kinds of debilitating physical effects.
"But it was for the cause.”
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