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Bill Murray

Sylvester Stallone (Courtesy of Lionsgate)


In 1999, during an appearance on TV’s "Inside the Actors Studio," Sylvester Stallone told host James Lipton and everyone watching that he was through making action movies.

He should have known better.

In 2008, Stallone returned to the genre to make Rambo, the fourth pic in his notoriously violent and hugely popular John Rambo series.

And now, at age 64, he straps on the guns and flak jacket for The Expendables, the summer’s throwback ’80s action pic starring not only Stallone, but old-timey action stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis (together in an extended cameo), Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke, and relative newbie action performers Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture and Steve Austin.

Stallone also co-wrote and directs the film about a group of mercenaries who head to South America to dispose of a brutal dictator. It’s Stallone’s writing skills — he penned Rocky and 18 other movies — and directing chops (eight films to date) that set him apart from Hollywood’s pantheon of pumped-up stars.

We spoke with a thoughtful Stallone on the line from L.A. And don’t be fooled by the mumbling delivery and droopy face (the result of a doctor using forceps on him during birth), Stallone is bright, and surprisingly candid, discussing his long career as an action star.

Q: First off, how is your neck? You broke it during filming.

A: “Yeah. I had some bone splinters already, so what happened was when Steve clobbered me and I snapped my head back, it bruised my spinal cord and drove a sliver into the spinal column. It was pretty bad, my legs and arms went numb. But what was really bad was that the doctor kept saying if you fall or if you trip, and it goes any further in, you could be a quadriplegic. I said, ‘Are you kidding me, don’t tell me that!’ They wanted to shut down the movie but I said, ‘I can’t, I’ll never get this group back together.’ So as soon as we wrapped the film, I had to go into surgery.”

Q: Was it a hard shoot all around?

A: “It was warfare, I couldn’t believe how difficult this film was just from a technical standpoint. It was so complex ’cause all the actors needed their moments and we didn’t have a huge budget, and how do I keep pushing these fellows, seriously, a minimum of 18 hours a day? Guys are collapsing, there are injuries.”

Expendables
  Stallone gets some ink from Rourke (Courtesy of Lionsgate)
Q: How did you assemble the cast? Did you call them and say, “Hey guys, I got this great idea for an old-school action movie?”

A: “At first it was just me, Jet and Jason. Then I went with Randy and Steve, men who were celebrities in the wrestling world but who really had not been seen much in the filmic world.”

Q: And then you landed the big fish — Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis.

A: “That was a shot in the dark. I thought, boy I have this one situation in the beginning which lights the fuse, starts the mission, and even though it’s an enlarged cameo it would great. Arnold and I are probably never going to work together, and Bruce, it would be rare, so I just started to pursue it. It took months and months because of their busy schedules — but I couldn’t believe it, they agreed. I went, ‘Whoa, this is fantastic.’ And they did it for free.”

Q: Really?

A: “Yes, they did it for free on their own time. The minute we wrapped, Arnold was back in Sacramento and Bruce was on a plane to Turkey. We literally only had three and a half hours to do it. We did it in a church at 4 o’clock on a Saturday morning so Arnold wouldn’t catch any flack for working on state time.”

Q: You’re looking pretty ripped in the film. How hard is it to get into shape in your 60s?

A: “It gets more difficult as you get older because of the wear and tear on the joints, so you have to readjust the types of workouts and be a little more scientific. And I had actually gotten too big on the last Rambo, I was, ‘What was I thinking.’ I said to my wife, ‘When were you going to tell me I was gigantic?’ So on this film I had to cut back about 25 pounds and that took a little bit of work, a major diet change.”

Q: Do you think you suffered from body dysmorphia, where you start losing perspective on what your body actually looks like?

A: “No doubt about it. No doubt. There’s no question in Rambo I thought, ‘Well, I look okay,’ and then when I saw myself outside the Rambo set, standing next to normal people, I thought, ‘My god man, you’ve become the beast from the east. What happened, you’re not meant to be 220 pounds.’ I’m meant to be 170.”

Q: What do you weigh right now?

A: “I’m 175.”

Q: It seems like The Expendables was made for your fans. They love the vintage Sly, and this is the movie they want to see you in.

A: “I’m hoping for that. For many, many years there was a sense of being — almost, like, self-conscious — about this so-called action genre. Then I thought, ‘Why?’ I should be so happy because it’s just modern mythology, it’s The Hero’s Journey, it’s Joseph Campbell. If it’s done right it’s wonderful. Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved Steve Reeves as Hercules, and how he overcomes overwhelming odds, and I’ve still yet to outgrow that.”

Ingrid Randoja is the deputy editor of Famous.

SIDEBAR

The Day Dolph Almost Killed Sly

The broken neck at the hands of Steve Austin on The Expendables set wasn’t the first time Sylvester Stallone almost died after a blow from a fellow actor. In fact, another of Sly’s Expendables co-stars almost took his life 25 years ago.

Stallone cast old friend and Rocky IV boxing adversary Dolph Lundgren as a double-crossing mercenary in the new film. And out of the entire cast, it's Lundgren who shares the most powerful bond with Stallone — having almost killed him during the Vancouver filming of the 1985 Rocky pic.

“The night before shooting the boxing scene I had seen a very famous fight between Marvin Hagler and Tommy Hearns. These two consummate fighters hated each other so much they literally forgot all kinds of technique and just attacked each other viciously. It was an extraordinarily fight. So I said, ‘Dolph, I know we choreographed a lot of this but what I want you to do is come out for the first 30 seconds and just try and knock me out, really go for it. I’ll slip and block and do the best I can, but don’t hold back on me.’ That was a really bad suggestion on my behalf,” says Stallone.

“So he caught me an uppercut in my chest, and that night I thought, ‘Boy, I’m having a hard time breathing.’ So I go to the hospital — they thought I was in a car accident. The next thing I know I'm on a low altitude flight from Vancouver to St. John's hospital in Santa Monica and in intensive care. We shut down filming for nine days while I recovered.”

—Ingrid Randoja



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