Sylvester Stallone has disclosed that his pursuit of the muscular frame he built for the Rocky and Rambo franchises led him into bulimia and steroid use, a period he now describes as a “terrible toll” on his health. The 80-year-old actor made the admission in a New York Times interview timed to the Sept. 29 release of his memoir, “The Steps.”
Stallone traced the shift in his approach to his body to a creative decision he made decades ago. Rocky, he said, called for a smooth, unassuming look, while Rambo demanded something closer to an animal. “I started to think: Design your body like a jaguar, a cat,” he said, distinguishing his goal from the sheer bulk associated with contemporaries like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He wanted lean, aggressive muscle rather than mass.
That pursuit spiraled into what Stallone called an obsession. By the time he filmed “Rocky III” in 1982, his body fat had dropped to 2.6%, and he found himself unable to keep food down. “It got to the point where I became bulimic,” he said, describing the condition as tied to an “obsessive body-worship kind of thing” rather than a separate struggle.
Steroids played a parallel role, according to Stallone, who said he cycled the drugs in six-week intervals to sustain his physique. He pushed back on any notion that his look came from training alone. “Nobody does it without additives and drugs, period,” he said, adding that the toll went beyond the physical.
Stallone pointed to 1997’s “Cop Land” as a turning point, when he gained weight to play a small-town sheriff and, for the first time in his career, portrayed what he called “the weakest guy in the room.” His account echoes a history of scrutiny over performance-enhancing drug use; in 2007, he pleaded guilty in Australia to bringing human growth hormone into the country.
The memoir arrives fifty years after “Rocky” premiered and months after Stallone turned 80, framing the revelations as part of a broader reflection on the years that shaped his career.
