Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone born Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone July 6 1946 is an American actor and filmmaker After his beginnings as a struggling actor for a number of years upon arriving to New York City in 1969 and later Hollywood in 1974 he won his first critical acclaim as an actor for his costarring role as Stanley Rosiello in The Lords of Flatbush He subsequently found gradual work as an extra or side character in films with a sizable budget until he achieved his greatest critical and commercial success as an actor and screenwriter starting in 1976 with his role as boxer Rocky Balboa in the first film of the successful Rocky series 1976present for which he also wrote the screenplays In the films Rocky is portrayed as an underdog boxer who fights numerous brutal opponents and wins the world heavyweight championship twice In 1977 he was the third actor in cinema to be nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor His film Rocky was inducted into the National Film Registry and had its props placed in the Smithsonian Museum His use of the front entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Rocky series led the area to be nicknamed the Rocky Steps Philadelphia has a statue of his Rocky placed permanently near the museum and he was voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame Up until 1982 his films were not big box office successes unless they were Rocky sequels and none received the critical acclaim achieved with the first Rocky This changed with the successful action film First Blood in which he portrayed the PTSDplagued soldier John Rambo Originally an adaptation of the eponymous novel by David Morell First Bloods script was significantly altered by Stallone during the films production He would play the role in a total of five Rambo films 19822019 From the mid1980s through to the late 1990s he would go on to become one of Hollywoods highestpaid actors of that era by appearing in a slew of commercially successful action films which were however generally panned by critics These include Cobra Tango and Cash Cliffhanger the better received Demolition Man and The Specialist He declined in popularity in the early 2000s but rebounded back to prominence in 2006 with a sixth installment in the Rocky series and 2008 with a fourth in the Rambo series In the 2010s he launched The Expendables films series 20102014 in which he played the lead as the mercenary Barney Ross In 2013 he starred in the successful Escape Plan and acted in its sequels In 2015 he returned to the Rocky series with Creed that serve as spinoff films focusing on Adonis Donnie Creed played by Michael B Jordan the son of the illfated boxer Apollo Creed to whom the longretired Rocky is a mentor Reprising the role brought him praise and his first Golden Globe award for the first Creed as well as a third Oscar nomination having been first nominated for the same role 40 years prior