{"id":910719,"date":"2026-09-26T19:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T19:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/910719\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T19:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T19:16:09","slug":"sylvester-stallone-he-struggled-with-bulimia-and-used-steroids-while-filming-rocky-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/910719\/","title":{"rendered":"Sylvester Stallone he struggled with bulimia and used steroids while filming ‘Rocky III’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hollywood legend Sylvester Stallone abused steroids and struggled with bulimia while preparing for one of his famous Rocky Balboa films, the actor revealed in a stunning New York Times profile<\/a> published Saturday.<\/p>\n

Stallone admitted he cycled steroids and endured the eating disorder at the height of his fame in the 1980s, revealing he struggled in his relationship with his body at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen it became an obsession,\u201d he said, referencing how he curated his body to fit the \u201cRambo\u201d and \u201cRocky\u201d franchises.<\/p>\n

FilmMagic<\/p>\n

\u00a9United Artists\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

GC Images<\/p>\n

\u201cReally bad. It got to the point where I became bulimic. You heard it here first. I got down to 2.6 percent body fat when I was doing \u2018Rocky III,\u2019 and I couldn\u2019t hold anything down. Or I didn\u2019t 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,\u201d he told the NYT.<\/p>\n

Stallone said any actor pressured to stay in top physical shape at that time had to do drugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t as though you\u2019re a junkie, but if you\u2019re going to work out and try to stay in shape for six months straight, and you\u2019re eating yogurt and pudding, it\u2019s not happening,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Getty Images for Paramount+<\/p>\n

\u00a9United Artists\/courtesy Everett<\/p>\n

Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Stallone earned several Academy Award nominations and a Golden Globe win for his work in the Rocky franchise. <\/p>\n

The movie star said he would do a six-week steroid cycle that he viewed as mandatory to portray boxer Rocky Balboa. He did not specify which type of performance-enhancing drugs he used.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, my god, you have to. But you do it in a sensitive way \u2014 six weeks on, six weeks off,\u201d he said in a response to a question asking him if he took steroids. \u201cPeople go, \u2018Oh, you don\u2019t get that way naturally.\u2019 No, you don\u2019t. But that also took a terrible toll.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stallone said the 1997 movie \u201cCop Land,\u201d which saw him portray partially deaf New Jersey Sheriff Freddy Heflin, allowed him to loosen his body standards. He said the work left him \u201csomewhat liberated,\u201d though he says things went \u201csideways\u201d and he \u201cfell out of grace with Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 80-year-old has been quiet on the major blockbuster front since starring in Expendables 4 in 2023.<\/p>\n

Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images<\/p>\n

FilmMagic<\/p>\n

WireImage<\/p>\n

He released his biography documentary, \u201cSly,\u201d the same year. Stallone had roles in the 2024 action thriller \u201cArmor\u201d and the 2025 crime thriller \u201cAlarum.\u201d Most of his recent success has come from starring as a mafia boss in Paramount+\u2019s \u201cTulsa King.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump named Stallone one of his special Hollywood ambassadors earlier this year alongside actors Jon Voight and Mel Gibson.<\/p>\n

The action hero recently said he had no idea the president would name him to the position.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it just happened,\u201d he said. \u201cI was watching TV one night and they go, \u2018So Stallone and Mel Gibson and Jon Voight will be\u2009\u2026\u2019 And I went, \u2018What?\u2019 I said, \u2018Excuse me? Really?\u2019 Because if they had asked me in the beginning, I would have said, \u2018This is not possible.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He expressed concern about the position, saying, \u201cHollywood, I guess it\u2019s like feudal states. They have their little kingdoms. You don\u2019t go in and tell six studios how to do things. And Mel Gibson and Jon Voight, we\u2019re kind of do-our-own-thing people. No, it won\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hollywood legend Sylvester Stallone abused steroids and struggled with bulimia while preparing for one of his famous Rocky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,3335,48,361,31565,32488,2971,42816,75,83694],"class_list":["post-910719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrity-weight-loss","tag-classic-movies","tag-drugs","tag-eating-disorders","tag-entertainment","tag-rocky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}