Sylvester Stallone has loomed large in our popular imagination for 50 years, ever since he exploded onto the screen playing the iconic underdog boxer Rocky Balboa in a film he wrote and that won the best picture Oscar. Many more “Rocky” films came after that, and also another franchise, “Rambo,” which heralded a new era of action movies in which Stallone and his one-time nemesis Arnold Schwarzenegger modeled a very specific type of masculinity: physically imposing, morally unambiguous and emotionally aloof.
Now 80, and with a new memoir, titled “The Steps” (a nod to the Philadelphia Museum of Art stairs he famously scaled in “Rocky”), Stallone is ready to examine his own life, his work and the impact it has had on our culture. As he told me in our candid and at times shocking conversations, he can “make a castle out of regrets” for what his drive and fame did to his mind and his body. He also explained how his very difficult childhood, with abusive and neglectful parents, motivated the tough-guy image he showed the world.
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You wrote in “The Steps” that at difficult moments in your life, you told yourself to put those memories “away in a box” and avoid them, just move forward. What was it like to go back and revisit some of these things for this book? It was some mixed emotion. There were some tears, some laughter, some anger and bitterness. And then I thought, Maybe that was the motivation to do something extraordinary as opposed to having no angst inside of me. It’s like, The guy punched you in your mouth, but did he do you a favor? I truly believe that the parents are the sculptors, and they’re sculpting their masterpiece, or their disaster.
How you came into the world was, in many ways, how you have inhabited it, with a lot of turmoil and drama. Can you tell me about the day you were born? My mother also came from a lot of turmoil, and she really wasn’t mother material. She had grandiose plans for her life, so her pregnancy with me was a big-time interruption. I don’t think she wanted to believe it was happening, even though it was in the ninth month. She was finally on a bus and she goes into labor. It was bad. She just happened to be near a medical center, you might call it, like a charity ward.
And the people who delivered you used forceps and partially paralyzed your face. It could have been worse, because sometimes you get brain damage from it, but maybe that happened too. [Laughs] It was a terrible thing growing up because I slurred and I mumbled. It was like 10 times worse than Rocky.
Did you see yourself as having a disability when you were young? Yeah. If you have a lisp or a stutter, you’re so familiar with it. But other people are like: “What? What language is that?”
In the book you seem to suggest that both your parents saw your arrival as having ruined their ambitions in some way. You wrote, “Can you really make people proud who never wanted you in the first place?” And when you were very little, you were sent to go live in a boardinghouse, and your parents only visited you once a month. How did you understand that as a kid? I don’t know if there was some preventive thing or some blockage from being completely abandoned, but I was just raised by strangers and it became a natural environment. My parents were never nurturing, so this was actually a bonus compared to where I was living.
I think if you are emotionally deprived when you’re younger, you learn to lock things away, which is why I started with that quote about you locking things away. Do you think it made you tough? In the wrong way, it did. It made me very tough. And I literally didn’t figure out real, true love until I was 70. To really have unequivocally true love, that total abandonment, that reckless love that you would jump into a volcano for someone, that came late. And that’s a big pity. I was so consumed with not being another bum from the neighborhood. I was very, very competitive, like a pit bull. That’s what got me going. It’s not healthy.
Your parents had this very hostile and violent marriage, and they divorced when you were about 11 years old. What do you remember about that separation? It was traumatic. When my mom goes, “I’m leaving, I won’t be living here anymore,” I remember holding onto her leg, like being literally dragged. And she pulled the leg away, walked out the door and that was it. My brother came home a little bit after that and there was nobody there. I guess my father took me to the shop or something, so he was abandoned and he never got over that. Ever.
That scene of you holding your mother’s leg. I’m so sorry. What was going on? I don’t know because she never was a loving person. But there’s a connection at birth that some people have that is so palpable, that no matter what, you cannot break away from this need to have this person’s attention. It’s electric. And then being deprived and put into the dark, it’s terrible.
It’s 100 percent true: You can never get rid of the connection to your parents. You end up living with your dad. He loved horses and played polo. But what was it like living alone with your dad? Because that didn’t sound like a great time, either. It would be these constant bombastic explosions and then total silence. If he and I were talking and I said, “I don’t know if I agree with that,” he’d start spinning his fork and suck his teeth, and you knew what was coming. The next thing you know, wham! He had very big hands. You learn to duck. I didn’t put a lot of stuff in the book because I didn’t want a pity party, but it was insane. For example, before we go to church he said, “Go to the store and buy some bread.” I bring home sandwich spread, not bread, and he kicked me in the stomach, laid me out, got in the car and went to church. I’m there in the street with mayonnaise. Really, it’s unbelievable.
Your dad was not only abusive, but he was competitive with you. He often tried to one-up you, humiliate you. You became a very good polo player, and at a polo match, he dragged you off the horse and beat you up in front of everyone. Why do you think he was that way with you? I don’t know. His father was like this. His father was a very stoic barber with a mustache. They say a fly sitting on a ton of cow [expletive] thinks himself a king. He had this sort of imperiousness and he was cold as hell, and so my father was very, very cold and tough. There was a cat making noise outside the house. He went out, got the cat, took it into the laundry room, shot it and left it in the wash tub. I think he did that to impress me. Like, You’ll never be as tough as your old man. And I won’t. There is no chance. That’s a whole other league.
You keep using the word “tough.” But I don’t hear tough. I hear messed up. You know, you’re right. I’m using “tough” as a masculine banner for something much more perverse and weird.
And dark. And dark.
With all that drama and all that violence, was there any love between you two? Only on his deathbed. It’s so weird — my mother never hugged me, ever. Kissing? Forget it. It was always an air thing. And my father wasn’t any better. But I’ll never forget, I was maybe 9 years old, and he would have me take care of his horses. We were coming back from the barn. He’s driving, and I fell asleep. So he put my head on his knee and his hands on my head. I never got over that. I went, Wow, that’s what it feels like. Just a simple stroking of your child’s hair. But that was it. It was one and done.
You went to many different schools during this period, including one for kids who needed discipline, a reform school. Devereux.
You write about being put in a psych ward, and this was one of the most chilling things that I have read. Can you tell me that story and why you included it? At this school, there were five different departments for different ages. And in my age group, the teenagers, if you ever snuck out to see a girl or do something like that, you’d be reprimanded by being taken to a place called Park Lodge or the Snake Pit. On the outside it looked like a big, old Tudor home from the ’20s, and then you walked inside and you entered the heart of insanity. The smell, the filth, people running around naked, clawing, hands tied, drooling. This is what they thought would impress you never to break the rules again.
And they left you there for how long? I was there for a couple of weeks. It was wild. But this to me was one of the better things that happened, too. I said, I know they’re going to try to break me. I was attacked there. They tried to rip my groin off ——
What do you mean? There was a guy named Jay Bird. He was the son of an actor named Lloyd Nolan, and he was put in there. He was big, had no hair, always naked, rotten teeth. They called him Jay Bird because he was always naked as a jaybird. And I go into the bathroom on the way to the food mess hall, and he comes in and comes around me and he’s like ripping on my throat and he is going into my pants and grabbing my groin. Then the two guards come in and they’re beating the crap out of him with razor straps. I go, “What the hell is wrong with him?” And they say: “You’re in a crazy house, boy. Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s crazy.” But let me just get to the point. When I came out of there and was standing before the school principal and he said, “You learned your lesson?” I said: “I learned a lot more than that lesson. A much better lesson: You can’t break me.” So when I got to the city and everything that came after that, I always felt I was unbreakable in that way. My heart could be broken, like every human being, but I’m talking about will. [We reached out to Devereux for comment after this interview, and a spokesperson replied that, while they had not read the book, they respect Mr. Stallone’s “right to tell his story his own way,” take his account seriously and are “sorry for any trauma he remembers experiencing.”]
You end up showing up in New York City in your 20s. You’d dropped out of college at this point. You backpacked around Europe and you had no money. You had a dream, though, that you wanted to become an actor, and you take a job as an usher at a movie theater. What comes through is what an obsessive you became. You start writing down dialogue from your favorite films. What were you trying to do there? I was really trying to learn. I said, I’m nonexistent. I put on this monkey suit and people don’t even see you, but I can see what the audience reacts to, where they laugh, where they don’t, who gets up, why they get up. You listen and talk about the film. And then I started to write it down. I lived in a cell. It was very tiny. Maybe an eight-by-nine-foot room. So I’d sit on my bed and I’d have these old Traffic and Blood, Sweat and Tears albums, and those were my desk. And I would just translate notes. Sometimes I’d think, What if this is it, Sly? You’re sitting in the middle of a bed like a fool doing something that sounds so stupid to anyone else. Then the fear would come, and it’s like the thing in the psych ward: Don’t go there. Take the fear, swallow it, move on.
You had an apartment with blacked-out windows, where you would write scripts for days on end. In this period, you were getting into altercations. But you’re also spending your days not only writing but going to MoMA. You wrote in the book, “At my core, there is this simmering cauldron of emotion that can overflow with volatility, but can also be directed toward deep artistic purpose.” Do you think you ever learned how to control that cauldron? It’s very, very explosive. At the end of “First Blood,” there’s a nervous breakdown. It wasn’t written that way, but it came out. I said, “This is coming from that cauldron.” It’s the self-indignation of being run down, dismissed, because that’s the way I felt. You can call me ugly, you call me short, just don’t call me stupid. Because that is what my father used to say. And literally, it would turn me into a maniac to prove I’m not stupid. And I would just work and work and work. For example, I’m 80 years old, and this morning I’m up at 5 a.m. studying my dialogue that I don’t have to do for a month.
That scene in “First Blood” is just iconic. I was just watching it again yesterday. You are filled with rage and grief. The way it was written was, I’m supposed to commit suicide in a very cool manner. I said, Wait a minute, there are thousands and thousands of men missing parts of their bodies who actually thought they were doing something worthwhile. They were following the rules and orders of their country, and then when they came back they’re looked at as aberrations, Frankensteins, monsters. Then I started to identify, that’s what I felt like growing up. And this rage that they must feel, that not their parents but their country is scorning them — their real parents, the ones they literally lost blood and friends and died for — I really identified with this dismissive attitude that I grew up with all the time. And boy, when I look at that footage, I look distorted. I was gone for a few seconds. Sometimes in acting or painting or writing, you just subliminally lose yourself. You do not know where you are. Maybe it happens in sex for two seconds, where you’re literally blanked out. What was that?
Was it one take? It was one take.
To come back to this period when you were in your apartment with the blacked-out windows: You’re trying to make it as an actor. You get a lot of rejections because of the way you look. And you write “Rocky” for yourself. The studios are very excited for the script, and it’s a well-known story that the studio tried to pay you more and more money not to be in the film. They wanted James Caan or Ryan O’Neal, but they give it to you because you held out. Was this because you had a sense that this was your last chance? This was it. I was done. I had less than a hundred bucks in the bank, and I don’t know if it was spiritual, but I said, “God, I know in my heart that I will regret this for the rest of my life, and I will be more of a broken man than if I had never done this in the first place.” I don’t know why I knew this, because I had had no success. I was green, and they had every right not to want to use me. If someone came to me and did the same thing and looked like me and slurred, I’d go: “Come on, man. You’re not acceptable to a lot of different people in this country.” But I just knew that this is the crossroad. This is the bridge. And if you don’t cross it, then jump off it. I’m not going to have someone else do it. I knew I would hate myself. I would kill myself — emotionally, that is. Not for real.
Can I ask you just about this thing that happened during “Rocky?” This is your big break. You have sacrificed everything for it. They give you the part. You’re a nobody. Everything’s riding on the movie. And you cast your dad as the timekeeper who rings the bell in the climactic boxing match. And it turned into a mess! Why did you let him back in? It was like: I just want you to love me for a little bit. Like, look what I did! Share it with me. I know you thought I was a fool my whole life, but here we are. He didn’t ring the bell properly, and I kept fighting and fighting and fighting. Everything’s choreographed. It’s one, two, three, four, bell. Not six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Carl Weathers is like, “What’s going on?” And of course it ended up in an altercation by the end. It got really nasty. A really bad Italian drama. But for a moment I thought, Jesus, he’d be proud.
Later you end up inviting your mom to the Oscars for “Rocky” and she blows you off. As we’ve discussed here, she was difficult. This is putting it lightly. You’re quite scathing about her in the book. And then in the 1990s she becomes a celebrity psychic. How did you manage the dynamics when she sees proximity to your fame as a financial opportunity? It was very hard. She had been married three more times, and then I saw her posing as a psychic with a turban and rhinestones and this buffoonery. Or she would go on “Howard Stern” and mock my father and call him terrible things and then they’d get on the phone. And I had my father and mother fighting on “Howard Stern”! What other guy has to go through this?
Yeah, this was 1992. They had this horrible on-air argument. It’s unbelievable. Why would you go on and humiliate yourself? Why are you humiliating me, my children? Stop! I’ll pay you anything to do whatever you want — the finest restaurants, anything. Just live your life and try to be proud. She goes, “Why aren’t you proud of me?” I’ll never forget. I asked her: “Have you ever done anything wrong? Do you have any regrets?” She goes, “No, why?” Wow. I live on regrets. I can make a castle out of regrets.
Did you go to therapy later in your life? No. It’s not going to help, because this doesn’t go away. You cover it all with subterfuge and ideology and intellectual this and that and breathing and meditation until that moment, late at night, poof. You’re right back there, and now you’re in anxiety. You ever have anxiety?
Oh, yeah. All that anxiety everyone has, it’s coming from something that’s so deep-rooted.
Tell me about when you first suffered anxiety. The first time was when I was 36 and I was watching dailies, and then all of a sudden I stood up and the hair on my neck went up and I started getting hot and I go, I’m dying, this is it, I’m on my way out. And bang, down I went. Took a knee, crawled, rolled over, and now I’m in this dark movie theater. Where the [expletive] did this come from? And then it happened again and again and again. It went away for five years. And then it always seems to happen, like, just as you’re getting ready to go on the “Today” show — boom! Anybody got a Xanax? It’s too late. So you’re just sitting there holding onto a chair.
I think people would find it very heartening that you have experienced that. Oh, big time. Especially as I got older. When I’m in a crowd, I’d be with my wife at an art exhibition and the room is filling up. It’s getting more and more, and then I’d go, “I’m going down,” and she’d be like, “Let’s get out of here.” And literally I just make it to the alley, boom, get down on one knee. So there’s something still bubbling inside, festering. It’s a marvel, for example, that we still have magma and lava four billion years later in the center of the Earth. How long does it take to cool an egg? My god. Our emotions are always on the verge of eruption.
Despite having such an upsetting upbringing, you’ve become a father of five. What did you learn about being a good parent, considering you didn’t have role models for that? I really wasn’t a very good parent. My wife, Jennifer, is the greatest woman ever. And she is the most giving. I don’t have that gear of just abandonment of your own personal self for someone else. She raised my daughters that way. My first marriage wasn’t like that. I was in my warrior mode. Let’s conquer the world. Everything fell by the wayside. It was just a measly manner of existence.
You suffered an unimaginable loss in 2012 when your eldest son, Sage, died. He had an undiagnosed heart condition that killed him when he was only 36. I imagine that must have profoundly changed you. The thing is, you have so many episodes of guilt. Like: What could I have done? Should I have been there? What if I did that? If I went right or went left? I’ll never forget, it was so cold: My mother’s new husband, who I’d never even met, who was a doctor, called me and goes: “Sly, he’s gone. Sage — he’s gone.” I went, “Gone where?” “He died, he’s gone. I’m sorry.” Click.
That’s how you found out? That’s right. Because of the funeral, dealing with the mother, dealing with your life in the present, it just takes you into a whole other world. You go: Wow, I’m holding it together. When’s it going to happen? And then about a week later, I was all alone in my room, and a wail came out of me I’ve never heard before or since. It was just pain and grief and guilt. It was not human. But all I can say is that he was a very kind kid. He had a great mother. He would have done wonderful things in the future. I just had no idea that he had something that you would expect a very advanced adult to have. But no, you don’t get over that.
I’m sorry. [Shakes head]
[Long Pause] Back to “Rocky.” Back to “Rocky.”
It got 10 Oscar nominations. It ended up winning best picture. And you end up capturing the public’s imagination. I’m very interested in you looking back at this transition, from a struggling actor to suddenly becoming the hottest star in Hollywood. Did you look at fame in the same way as the psych ward, like: This isn’t going to change me? Or did you look at it as: This is everything I ever wanted? Because fame breaks some people. It didn’t break me. It made me combative. It made me very I told you so revengeful. Spiteful. I was so insufferable. Even with The New York Times, I was like, “Oh, ‘Madame Bovary,’ anyone could write that.” I became a petulant child. Years later, I despised myself. I’m surprised I’m still here. I managed to alienate the entire press and people who believed in me. I was just not humble. There was no humility whatsoever. Again, it’s just childhood eruptions coming to the surface at the most inopportune time.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who you’re now friends with, was a huge action star back then, and you’ve said you couldn’t stand to be in the same room. Why did you hate him so much? Because he was a challenge. I thought I had something going on. Then I see this guy, this immovable force, a very confident human being, even more so than me, and more psychological in the way he would manipulate and do things very cunningly. Not in a negative way, but just shrewdly. I was a blunt force; he was Machiavellian cool. He’s winning these awards, and he’s a bodybuilder, and I consider myself somewhat more of a ——
A thespian. A thespian, a peripatetic dramaturg just wandering the country acting. [Laughs] And I went, Wow, this is the guy I’m going to have trouble with. And sure enough, we did. We were just going at each other, which turned out to be fantastic. I’m regretful for some of the things I said about him, but he antagonized me in a creative way, and I did to him. It forced us to keep moving higher, and bigger guns, louder, more action, disemboweled bodies, everything, until we really carved out a niche that will never quite come around again, that ’80s over-the-top action genre that he and I pioneered.
It’s like a creative marriage, in a way. It’s like Ali and Frazier. You need that thing that brings you to the surface more than any other person. It’s not even hatred. It’s this guy, he won’t go away. I dream about him. I’m on his mind. He’s on my mind. It’s very rare. Eventually we end up working together in “The Expendables,” and I go on the campaign trail for him. Unbelievable.
When was the moment that you two put this to rest? Did it just come with age and him moving into politics? Yeah. At first I thought, Come on, actors in politics? This is oil and water, because actors are very self-absorbed, and politicians, if they’re good, should be the opposite. But he was definitely sincere about it, and I don’t know why but he asked me to be at an event. And sure enough, then we hit it off. He’s one of a kind.
I want to ask you about your body. Well, now you’re getting personal.
At several points in your career you were exceptionally muscular, which wasn’t your build before “Rocky.” How has your relationship with your body changed over time? It became very intimate, you might say. It was my armor. I looked at Rocky: very smooth, very normal-looking guy. And then I said, I think the character would start to become a bit more vain. And then in “Rambo,” you’re playing a warrior, so you’d be a little bit more animalistic. You wouldn’t be so smooth. 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. Then it became an obsession. Really bad. It got to the point where I became bulimic. You heard it here first. I got down to 2.6 percent body fat when I was doing “Rocky III,” and 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. And nobody does it without additives and drugs, period. I don’t care what they say. It isn’t as though you’re a junkie, but if you’re going to work out and try to stay in shape for six months straight, and you’re eating yogurt and pudding, it’s not happening.
So you were taking steroids, you’re saying? Oh, my god, you have to. But you do it in a sensitive way — six weeks on, six weeks off. People go, “Oh, you don’t get that way naturally.” No, you don’t. But that also took a terrible toll. 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. Then things went sideways and I just fell out of grace with Hollywood. But yeah, I’ve abused my body. I’ve had nine back operations, two shoulder operations, three neck fusions. Everything is held together with baling wire, but I still want to stay in good shape.
Do you still see it as your armor? No, no, no.
Because you’re still fit, and you’re 80. I’m sort of fit, but I take a lot of pills to keep going. It’s come at a terrible price. If I could do it over again, I would say, “Let someone else carry the banner and don’t do your own stunts.” I don’t know what it was about hurting myself all the time.
Was it masochistic? Very masochistic. And this is all going back to dad and back there in the polo field: No, you’re not going to break me. But you do get broken a little bit — physically, not mentally.
You said something earlier about regrets, and that you don’t get to be your age in your career without a mountain of them. It’s horrible. It’s the fog of war, the war of trying to succeed, and you can blame it on that or on petty self-absorption, and wow it is painful. But yesterday is dead. Do you forgive yourself for being a bastard? No, you just regret. You denied people your love, but you also did worse to yourself.
Have you forgiven your parents? [Pause] I’ve accepted that they are who they are. I guess you could say, yeah, I do. It’s definitely a delicate peace treaty, but what are we going to do? Walk around yelling at ghosts? Come back here! We’re not finished! No, I can’t. All I can do is cherish every second, because let’s face it, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
You have always exuded invincibility. That’s been your persona in your life and in many of your roles. So it’s kind of astonishing to see you be so vulnerable. [Laughs] Even though I put on this facade of having armor, I really have a lot of empathy for people who just didn’t get a break in life. That’s why I think “Rocky” was such a success.
You talked about how no one would return your calls in Hollywood for a period in the late 1990s. And this was when you had movies that didn’t do well: “Judge Dredd,” “Daylight,” “Get Carter,” “Driven,” “D-Tox,” “Avenging Angelo.” I came across an interview you gave to The New York Times in 1992. The article quotes one prominent Hollywood agent who said: “I think he’s a diminishing asset. With every film he does, he goes down a little further. He’s the new Burt Reynolds.” How do you explain this period of not-so-great films? Was it a quality-control issue? It really was. I didn’t apply myself to the actual quality and the components — in other words, the right director, the right co-star, the right advertising, the right theme song. These are things that I used to really apply myself to. And I suppose I just got lazy and started this whirlpool.
What does it do to the soul of an artistic person to make movies that aren’t good? It’s a death in the family. It’s not as though you didn’t sell a vacuum cleaner today. It’s all over the world. And there is a part of human nature that revels in that. I don’t take it personally. I think that quite often, human nature says, OK, he’s had enough time, let’s bring on the new generation. When you reach a certain age in this business, it becomes a very, very competitive, delicate and tenuous career. That’s why I think it’s a very neurotic business at times, because the product is you. It isn’t like, Oh, you’re rejecting my leather jacket. No, we don’t like you. I’ve always said the artist dies twice. The second death is the easiest one, compared to the career death in which you’re being dismissed. But it woke me up and I was so invigorated starting to write. The hardest and the proudest moment by far in my life is “Rocky Balboa,” because nobody wanted it. I was done — and when I say done, I mean, my agent fired me, managers fired me. I go: OK, this sounds very familiar. Let’s start over again. Let’s see if we can do it at 60. So it was a fantastic voyage into the unknown.
I have a question about “Rambo.” As we discussed, the first movie was quite complicated, about this vet who was discarded by his country who had PTSD. But then the character over time turns into this classic action-movie hero, with less depth than the original character had. Absolutely right. And that’s my fault. I didn’t really focus on the depth of what he was still going through while trying to save P.O.W.s. He’s trying to save his own soul. We never got into that. It’s just bravado, bravado, bravado. That’s all me. You realize, flexing your muscles is a lot easier than showing your soul. And it was terrible. It was like a cartoon.
It came to define this projection of American power. And in an interview in 1985, when you were talking about your view of war and your politics, you said, “If you have the power like the United States, if you’re gonna talk tall and carry a big stick, eventually you’ve gotta use it or they’ll think you’re bluffing.” Did “Rambo” represent a part of your worldview at that point? It did. And now I realize all war is futile. It’s a mechanism to make tons of money for the war department and manufacturers, and these kids are just going out there into a gristmill, being chopped up, and then when they come back with no arms it’s, Oh, sorry, you’re on your own. I hate it and I’m bitterly opposed to it. But at one time I was truly gung-ho. I don’t know if I was just trying to go against the current. In Hollywood, there’s a certain dynamic, as you know. I think it was just naïveté, really, because I read a lot, especially after “First Blood,” and I go, Wow, this is brutal, this is horrible, there’s no glory in war. None.
When did you become antiwar? Look, if you’re under attack, of course you have to defend yourself. I don’t want to get into politics now, but all wars basically destroy both sides. It really creates this horrible history. Grudges are held, countries are destroyed and lines are redrawn, for what?
I know you don’t want to talk about politics, but I am interested in something you just said, which is this idea of Hollywood being liberal and you being seen as a political conservative. Did that put you at odds in what was perceived as a liberal industry, or is that perception actually wrong? It is wrong. I totally understand why the perception is indelible. When “Rocky” came out, I was so naïve. I was pushing 30, and I didn’t even know the difference between Democrat and Republican. But Rocky wrapped himself in a flag. Every movie we were up against at that time was very political, extremely erudite, intellectual. And “Rocky” was not that. It was emotional. I think right away that put me over here. And then when I did “First Blood,” me being jingoistic, and he’s a saber-rattler, it caused a major rift. I wish it wasn’t like that, because I really think a lot of these actors have great empathy, great heart, and they’re really more for the working man down in the trenches. And that’s where I live, you know what I mean? But I’m not considered that. And sometimes you say things and you don’t realize the long-range effects.
You said something earlier that really caught my ear. You said that you can “see the light at the end of the tunnel,” which I took to mean the end of your life. And I was wondering how you feel about death and about there being less time in front of you than there is behind you. In panic mode.
Really? Because of what I said before: I built a castle with thousands of stones made of regrets. I’m trying to make up for it in my own petty way, and I don’t know if there’s enough time. There is not enough time. What I have to do is just focus on the ones who really need me and the ones who I want to go on and have their own life and legacy. At 78, that’s where the insurance company goes, That’s the average. So I’m two years into borrowed time, and I’m making up for it as much as I can, because you’re never too old to be in love, never too old to dance with the great memories that you’ve had, and not wallow in the worst swamp of all, which is the swamp of loneliness. That is truly premature burial.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations. Listen to and follow “The Interview” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio or Amazon Music. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Director of photography (video): Jessica Dimmock
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