Sylvester Stallone has opened up about the bittersweet emotions surrounding the night his career changed forever at the 1977 Academy Awards.
Rocky, the film he wrote and starred in, won Best Picture and launched Stallone into the upper ranks of Hollywood. Yet the milestone was overshadowed by a painful absence.
In a recent interview with CBS, the actor explained that his parents were not there to share the achievement—and that their absence still weighs on him decades later.
Stallone recalled sitting through the nominations convinced that Rocky had little chance of winning. Other writers even approached him during the ceremony to insist that the film would not take home the top prize.
The 80-year-old star told People: “When the applause started, I wanted to disappear into my seat. I didn’t feel the kind of excitement you would expect. I felt sad because I had imagined it as a celebration with my family—a moment when we could say, ‘We made it.’ But that never happened.”
He said the experience led him to understand that the strongest affection he would receive at that stage of his life would come from the movie audiences sitting in the darkness.
Sylvester Stallone has described the heartbreaking realization he experienced after Rocky won the Oscar for Best Picture; pictured September 28
The 80-year-old filmmaker said Rocky’s Best Picture victory at the 49th Academy Awards left him feeling “sad” rather than purely joyful
Rocky prevailed over Taxi Driver, Network and All the President’s Men to claim the Academy’s highest honor. Stallone was also nominated for Best Actor for playing Rocky Balboa, though the award went to Network star Peter Finch.
During a CBS Mornings interview with Gayle King last year, Stallone admitted that he has never fully accepted his parents’ decision not to attend the Oscars.
“It was an incredible moment, but it was also devastating,” he said. “You want the people you love—the people whose approval you once felt denied by—to be there when you reach the Oscars. When they choose not to come, you realize you may never completely make peace with it.”
“I still carry it with me,” he added. “I wish I didn’t. I pray, I try everything, but it remains there.”
Stallone’s latest reflections arrive as he promotes his new memoir, The Steps.
Rocky defeated Best Picture contenders Taxi Driver, Network and All the President’s Men
In a conversation with CBS’s Tracy Smith at 92NY last week, Stallone remembered thinking, “This has to be a joke,” when Jack Nicholson announced Rocky as the winner; pictured as Rocky in 1976
Stallone has been promoting his memoir, The Steps
In an interview with The New York Times about the book, which was published on September 29, Stallone also spoke candidly about having previously struggled with an eating disorder.
The Hollywood icon discussed publicly for the first time how the physical demands of his film roles affected his relationship with his body and appearance.
“My physique became my armor,” he explained. “I looked at Rocky and saw someone smooth and ordinary. Then I thought the character might gradually become more concerned with his appearance.”
He said he began shaping his body to resemble “a jaguar or a cat”—not as large as Arnold Schwarzenegger, but more wild, forceful, flexible and athletic.
He continued: ‘Then it got to the point where I became bulimic. You heard it here first. I got down to 2.6% body fat when I was doing Rocky III, and 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.’
The actor admitted using steroids to bulk up his frame, adding: ‘Nobody does it without additives and drugs, period.
‘I don’t care what they say. It isn’t as though you’re a junkie, but if you’re going to work out and try to stay in shape for six months straight, and you’re eating yogurt and pudding, it’s not happening.’
