Sylvester Stallone, 80, says he wishes he had left the stunts to professionals, calling his decades of doing them himself a mistake that wrecked his body. Speaking to Fox News Digital, the “Rocky” star said he has “millions, millions of regrets” about his action career. He rejected any pride in the punishment, saying: “I think I’m an idiot for doing that.”
The medical toll is long. Stallone said he ended up with nine back operations and three neck fusions, and that both shoulders were ripped out. One stunt went wrong while he filmed a scene in which wrestler Steve Austin tackled him, leaving him with dislocated shoulders and a fractured neck. Stallone told the outlet that injuries compound over time, to the point where he must “make peace with the pain.”
His advice to younger performers is blunt. He told them not to play the showboat and to let the pros handle it. “You cannot beat gravity,” he said. “When you hit the ground, you lose.” He compared the cumulative damage to what football players endure.
The remarks echo a message Stallone delivered last month. Ahead of his memoir “The Steps,” he told The New York Times he treated his body in “masochistic” ways that came “at a terrible price.” He said he would tell his younger self to let someone else carry the banner.
Stallone has voiced this regret for years. In a 2022 interview, he pointed to his back operations, neck fusion and repaired shoulders and offered the same moral: do not do your own stunts. That interview coincided with the launch of “Tulsa King,” the crime series that has kept him working in his late seventies.
The timing carries irony. A biopic titled “I Play Rocky” is revisiting Stallone’s early fight to play the boxer himself, a story built on the stubborn self-reliance he now questions. Asked how it felt to see his younger life dramatized, he said his feelings were mixed, adding that he is not dead yet.
Stallone’s confession lands in an industry that increasingly markets stars who perform their own feats as a selling point. His warning offers a rare counterweight from the man who helped define that image, and it comes with a hospital-sized bill of evidence.
