The stigma over steroids, which has hung over Hollywood stars of action and superhero films, has steadily lifted, like multiple 45-lbs plates sliding off a barbell and clanging on the gym floor.
Where once there was silence or denial, there’s now open dialogue. Three years ago, “Reacher” star Alan Ritchson told Men’s Health that getting on testosterone was “huge” for recovering from the physical toll of making the hit Prime Video show. A year later, Frank Grillo, who plays Rick Flag Sr. in James Gunn’s DCU, told Men’s Health that he takes testosterone and is “not cheating at anything except aging.”
Then last month, Sylvester Stallone took it to another level. During an appearance on The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast, the 80-year-old shocked the world and said “nobody does it without additives and drugs, period.”
When host Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked if he meant steroids, he didn’t blink.
“Oh my God, you have to,” Stallone said, even noting that he cycled them “six weeks on, six weeks off.” This isn’t a shock to anyone who watched the way that Stallone, in the wake of the success of 1976’s “Rocky” and 1982’s “First Blood,” ballooned his physique into something altogether superhuman. A body like that, seemingly carved from a single slab of marble, doesn’t come naturally, Stallone added, “unless you’re just a freak of nature.” He said the regimen “took a terrible toll,” including on his psychological well-being, leading to mood swings.
The comments by some of the biggest action stars marks a shift in how celebrities talk about packing on muscle for major roles, and how their superhuman bodies are perceived by the general public. The debate over “natty or not,” a question of whether an actor achieved their physique naturally, has largely ended, with many actors decidedly not. In its place is an open discussion about TRT, or testosterone replacement therapy and a growing acceptance of the reality that looking like a superhero is often not achieved through fitness alone. It helps that TRT is framed as a medical treatment rather than a way to cheat the system or gain an unfair edge.
Victoria Felkar, a fitness and health researcher who has studied steroid hormones, told TheWrap that compounds “that were once very scary to that middle class family in Ohio” are now seen as something that “could actually be helpful.”
The loophole
Testosterone is an anabolic steroid and has been classified by the Drug Enforcement Agency as a schedule III controlled substance since 1990. This is the same category of drugs Stallone said he cycled for decades earlier in his career, in order to achieve that muscle-bound look that was so closely associated with his personal brand.
There is, of course, a loophole.
When an actual doctor writes a prescription for testosterone, it is a different ballgame, as actors who would never say “steroids” out loud can now openly admit they’re on TRT for energy, recovery or aging. They’re no longer on “The Tonight Show” telling talk show-friendly stories about how they ate 6,000 calories a day to achieve their condition. Instead, it’s positioned as a convenient solution for a medical condition that also makes them look like they bench press school buses.
This therapy, according to the Mayo Clinic, might reverse the symptoms of decreased testosterone (either due to age or illness), but lists a host of potential risks, including “worsening sleep apnea,” acne or “stimulating noncancerous growth of the prostate.”
Testosterone prescriptions have exploded in the U.S. and reached nearly 12 million in 2025, up from fewer than 1 million in 2000, according to data provided to The New York Times by the market research firm IQVIA. During the pandemic, the DEA began letting telehealth providers prescribe testosterone over the phone or app, without seeing the patients in person. It has extended that rule through the end of 2026.
All someone needs is a telehealth appointment and a blood test. If the results check out, the patient is prescribed testosterone and receives a monthly supply of it, for a small monthly recurring fee.
Easy as that.
The changing attitudes
In 2024, bodybuilder Anthony Hughes told TheWrap that admitting steroid use would be “a $50 million mistake” for a star, severely impacting roles and, perhaps more crucially, their reputation.
Utilizing TRT is how actors have started to get around all of that.
“Years ago, a big actor who admitted steroid use lost money, lost roles, and got attacked. The public was told the champions got there through pure hard work. That story was a lie. It protected the people selling things that do not work,” said Hughes, a former lawyer from Sacramento who has since moved to Thailand, who is known on social media as Tony Huge. “Now big money has entered the peptide and hormone business. When they can profit, the media turns positive. The story is still controlled. What gets said depends on what the powerful can sell.”
Jay Campbell, the best-selling author of “The Testosterone Optimization Therapy Bible,” sees it differently. “They are being honest because honesty and transparency is the only way to roll now,” he told TheWrap. “So many people are done with the bulls–t and lies. It’s 100% shifted but whether its more acceptable or not depends on the audience.”
But she did add a caveat. “I will say there’s still a tremendous amount of stigma surrounding all of this stuff,” she noted.
Beyond TRT is another popular steroid called Anavar, which according to Hope Harbor Wellness produces “an increase [in] muscle mass and strength, and it tends to cause less fluid retention than some other steroids, which is why it became popular among athletes and bodybuilders.”
For 2021’s “Boss Level,” Grillo said, “I did something else, which was the Anavar, and the Anavar put on muscle, lean muscle for me,” Grillo told Men’s Health a year ago about the eight weeks of preparation he did for 2021’s “Boss Level.”
He said he stacked his Anavar with testosterone and stayed on “the same one cc of Testosterone,” which he added “changed my ability to recover faster. It changed my sleep. It changed my moods.”
As for the critics, Grillo said, “It’s amazing what people say about it. ‘You take steroids.’ Okay, whatever.”
The stigma isn’t entirely gone
With Grillo, Ritchson and now Stallone opening up, why don’t other stars admit to using TRT?
Publicist Brian S. Gross said that Stallone’s financial situation and position in Hollywood allows him to talk freely about his steroid use while younger stars stay quiet. He’s reached the status that an admission won’t impact him anymore.
Stallone couldn’t have admitted it at his peak in the late 1980s, Gross said. There was too much to lose. And attitudes towards the subject were much more judgmental. “That was a different time,” he said.
Now, Gross said, “It’s about money. It’s about will admitting something affect your career in a negative manner?”
When Stallone opened up about his steroid use on the “Steps” book tour last month, he didn’t call out any actors, but said he could tell who was using. “I can see it a mile away when it’s obvious,” Stallone said.
Stallone also defended those same actors. “Guys, I know you think these guys are natural,” he told the crowd during his interview with CBS Correspondent Tracy Smith. “But in their defense, if you’re trying to play a sort of superhero or a person that is above and beyond, you know, the normal guy, a hero… It’s almost like putting on part of a costume.”
Felkar added that older stars have a cover that younger ones don’t, because having low testosterone or “Low T” is now a recognized medical condition that affects aging men or individuals with specific conditions. “If you fit who it should be prescribed to, then talking about it isn’t going to … have as much backlash,” Felkar said.
That only some veteran stars are willing to speak up, even now, she added, “speaks to the stigma that might still exist around it.”
Gross expects the stigma around testosterone to change. Within the next half-decade, he said, a superhero actor could say he’s on TRT during a press junket without it becoming a headline. A reporter probably won’t blink an eye.
“Five years is a pretty safe assumption of acceptance,” Gross said.
Grillo has an answer for critics who call his steroid use cheating. “I’m an actor. I’m not the linebacker for the New York Giants. I’m not a competitive Olympic wrestler. I’m not playing for the New York Knicks,” Grillo said.
Stallone’s up-and-down journey
Stallone has taken an even bigger step, personally commenting on social media posts about his previous steroid use. Prior to his book tour, Stallone responded to a post on Instagram back in June by a popular fitness influencer’s video about his “Rambo” physique. He wrote that what he took for 1988’s “Rambo III,” a movie where he looks like a child’s drawing of a circus strongman, “was very tame by today’s standards.”
For his meaty look in “Rambo III,” Stallone listed Anavar and “a lot of working out,” two meals a day for seven months and 5 a.m. workouts in the desert.
“Most professional users will run 50-100mg per day for 4-6 weeks towards the end of a heavier androgenic cycle of testosterone,” Campbell said. “This is done to harden up and or increase muscle density and granularity.”
“He was incredibly conditioned and muscularly dense from the AAS (Anavar, Testosterone, GH and whatever other Androgen(s) he used),” Campbell added. “That was a physique that demonstrates what can happen when everything is fully optimized.”
But Stallone has given up the beefy body once before.
For 1997’s “Cop Land,” directed by James Mangold (who would go on to direct “Logan” and “A Complete Unknown”), Stallone completely transformed, becoming bulky in a very different way. He gained weight to play a partially deaf sheriff, “the weakest guy in the room,” in a sleepy New Jersey town full of retired (and often crooked) cops. At the time Stallone said the role left him “somewhat liberated.”
The liberation didn’t last.
He rebuilt the physique to return to the role that made him a superstar for 2006’s “Rocky Balboa” and maintained it for 2008’s “Rambo.” The yo-yo-ing of intense training and recovering from said training is incredibly strenuous on an actor’s body. When Stallone got into the groove, he stayed there. But it wasn’t just hard work that returned him to peak performance.
In 2007, Australian customs officials found forty-eight vials of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) in Stallone’s luggage along with Testosterone. Stallone pleaded guilty to illegally importing them into the country, during a tour to promote his film, “Rocky Balboa.”
At 80, he’s still working, now on “Tulsa King” (created by the prolific Taylor Sheridan, it’s one of the most popular television shows currently streaming). And he’s still trying to stay in shape, after years of both physical exertion and steroid abuse. “Everything is held together with baling wire,” Stallone said.
Stallone’s recent admission of steroid use isn’t going to hurt his legacy. If anything, it might add a patina of realism to his godlike stance as a hulking giant and a box office champion.
Drew Taylor contributed to this report.
The post Why Hollywood’s Biggest Stars Are Suddenly Opening Up About Steroid Use appeared first on TheWrap.
