Sylvester Stallone is known for playing tough guys and action heroes, but he’s revealing the punishing toll his career took on his mind and body.
The actor suffered from an eating disorder, used steroids and endured anxiety attacks, he said in a new interview.
At 80, he also reflected on his mental health.
“You’re never too old to be in love, never too old to dance with the great memories that you’ve had, and not wallow in the worst swamp of all, which is the swamp of loneliness. That is truly premature burial,” Stallone told The New York Times.
The Academy Award-nominated actor has written a new memoir, titled “The Steps.” It takes readers from his childhood — when he slurred his words and “mumbled,” the result of doctors partially paralyzing his face when they used forceps during his delivery — to the highs and lows of fame.
Stallone found stardom playing a boxer in “Rocky,” a character he created; then “Rambo,” where he portrayed a troubled Vietnam veteran. Both franchises featured intensely physical roles requiring a body transformation.
Here’s what he said about his health journey:
He Had Bulimia
When he prepared for his role in “Rambo,” Stallone said he wanted to look aggressive, athletic and “more animalistic,” like a jaguar or a cat.
“Then it became an obsession. Really bad. It got to the point where I became bulimic,” the actor said.
Bulimia is an eating disorder where people binge on food, then make themselves vomit or use laxatives to prevent weight gain.
Stallone said he got down to 2.6% body fat when he was in “Rocky III.” That would be considered “dangerously low,” according to the National Academy of Sports Medicine.
“I couldn’t hold anything down. Or I didn’t want to keep it down because I became so obsessed with staying at that point of fitness, literally an obsessive body-worship kind of thing,” he recalled.
He added that he also periodically took steroids: “You have to. But you do it in a sensitive way — six weeks on, six weeks off… that also took a terrible toll.”
He ‘Abused’ His Body
Stallone said he once saw his body as his armor, and kept hurting himself by doing his own stunts, calling it “very masochistic.” He’s had nine back operations, two shoulder surgeries and three neck fusions.
“I’ve abused my body,” he noted. “Everything is held together with baling wire, but I still want to stay in good shape.”
At 80, he called himself “sort of fit,” said he takes a lot of pills to keep going.
He Suffered from Anxiety
Stallone remembered feeling intense anxiety for the first time when he was 36 and watching early unedited footage from a film.
“All of a sudden, I stood up and the hair on my neck went up and I started getting hot and I go, I’m dying, this is it, I’m on my way out,” he recalled.
“And then it happened again and again and again. It went away for five years. And then it always seems to happen, like, just as you’re getting ready to go on the Today Show — boom! Anybody got a Xanax? It’s too late. So you’re just sitting there holding onto a chair.”
The actor continued to experience anxiety as he got older, feeling the need to leave crowded rooms.
It Took Him a Long Time to Understand Love
The actor calls his wife of almost 30 years, Jennifer Flavin, “the greatest woman ever.”
“I literally didn’t figure out real, true love until I was 70,” Stallone said.
“To really have unequivocally true love, that total abandonment, that reckless love that you would jump into a volcano for someone, that came late. And that’s a big pity.”