Silvester Stallone

Sylvester Enzio Stallone (/stəˈloʊn/; born Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone, July 6,

1946) is an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.[1] 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 co-starring role as
Stanley Rosiello in The Lords of Flatbush. Stallone subsequently found gradual work as an extra
or side character in films with a sizeable budget until he achieved his greatest critical and
commercial success as an actor, starting in 1976 with his self-created role as the boxer Rocky
Balboa, in the first film of the successful Rocky series (1976–2018). In the films, Rocky is
portrayed as an underdog boxer that fights numerous brutal opponents, and wins the world
heavyweight championship twice.
In 1977, Stallone was the third actor in cinema to be nominated for two Academy Awards
for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. Stallone's film Rocky was inducted into the National
Film Registry, and had its props placed in the Smithsonian Museum. Stallone's 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 character Rocky placed permanently near the
museum, and he was voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Up until 1982, Stallone's 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 PTSD-plagued
soldier John Rambo. He would play the role in a total of five Rambo films (1982–2019). From the
mid 1980s through to the late 1990s, Stallone would go on to become one of Hollywood's
highest-paid actors of that area by appearing in a slew of commercially successful action films,
but generally panned by critics. These include Cobra, Tango and Cash, Cliffhanger, Demolition
Man, and The Specialist.