Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone, nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an Italian-American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, and film director. Stallone is known for his machismo and Hollywood action roles. Two of the notable characters he has portrayed include boxer Rocky Balboa and soldier John Rambo. The Rocky and Rambo franchises, along with several other films, helped his reputation as an actor and box office earnings. He is also the brother of Frank Stallone.

Stallone’s film Rocky was inducted into the National Film Registry as well as having its film 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 Rocky character placed permanently near the museum, on the right side before the steps.

Stallone was born on July 6, 1946 in New York City, the son of Frank Stallone, Sr., an Italian-American hairdresser, and Jackie Stallone (born Jacqueline Labofish), an astrologer, former dancer and promoter of women’s wrestling. He is the brother of actor and musician Frank Stallone. Stallone’s grandfather was born in Gioia del Colle, in the region of Puglia, Italy, and emigrated to the United States as a child, while Stallone’s mother was born in Washington, D.C. of Russian Jewish and French descent.

Complications his mother suffered during labor forced her obstetricians to use two pairs of forceps during his birth; misuse of these accidentally severed a nerve and caused paralysis in parts of Stallone’s face, resulting in his signature slurred speech and drooping lower lip. Between the ages of two and five Stallone was boarded in Queens, seeing his parents only on weekends. In 1951, he returned to live with his parents in Silver Spring, Maryland, where they operated a chain of beauty salons.

He enrolled in the Theater Arts Department at University of Miami for three years. He came within a few credit hours of graduation before he decided to drop out and pursue a career writing screenplays under the pen names Q. Moonblood and J.J. Deadlock (under neither of which names he sold any scripts) while at the same time taking bit parts in movies.

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Tags: accident, Actor, American, Boxer, Director, French, Italian, New York, Russia, The Rock, United States