New York Times<\/a> interview accompanying the memoir, Stallone describes a childhood marked by neglect, violence, and emotional deprivation.<\/p>\nHe says a difficult birth involving forceps left him with partial facial paralysis and a lifelong speech impediment.<\/p>\n
His parents divorced when he was about 11, and he recalls being sent to live in a boardinghouse and later enduring physical abuse from his father.<\/p>\n
Rather than simply portraying those experiences as obstacles he overcame, Stallone now sees them as forces that shaped his personality.<\/p>\n
”I was just raised by strangers,” he told The Times. Emotional deprivation, he said, taught him to ”lock things away.” He believes it made him tough \u2014 but ”in the wrong way.”<\/p>\n
That toughness became the foundation of his screen persona.<\/p>\n
After arriving in New York in the late 1960s, Stallone struggled to find work and spent his days studying films and writing.<\/p>\n
With less than $100 in the bank, he wrote Rocky and refused increasingly large offers from studios to sell the screenplay without playing the title role.<\/p>\n
He recalled praying, ”God, I know in my heart that I will regret this for the rest of my life,” if he surrendered the part.<\/p>\n
The film became a cultural phenomenon, earning 10 Oscar nominations and winning Best Picture.<\/p>\n
Stallone went on to build another franchise with “Rambo,” while his rivalry with Arnold Schwarzenegger helped define the muscular, hyper-masculine action cinema of the 1980s.<\/p>\n
But Stallone now views some of that mythology critically.<\/p>\n
He acknowledges that “Rambo” gradually lost the psychological complexity of the original First Blood.<\/p>\n
”Flexing your muscles is a lot easier than showing your soul,” he said, calling the later characterization ”like a cartoon.”<\/p>\n
His memoir also examines faith.<\/p>\n
Stallone was raised Catholic and has spoken for decades about Christianity’s influence on his work.<\/p>\n
In the Times interview, he recalls praying before making “Rocky.”<\/p>\n
Earlier, he has described the character as a reflection of his own Christian journey and said he felt God had prompted him to write the original film.<\/p>\n
Politics, meanwhile, remain complicated.<\/p>\n
Stallone rejects the notion that his films necessarily made him a conservative.<\/p>\n
He says he did not even understand the difference between Democrats and Republicans when “Rocky” was released, and argues that the movie’s flag imagery and “Rambo’s” nationalism helped create a political identity for him that was more complicated than his actual views.<\/p>\n
He now says, ”all wars basically destroy both sides,” a marked departure from the more hawkish attitude he expressed in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
His relationship with Donald Trump has nevertheless remained friendly.<\/p>\n
Trump named Stallone, Jon Voight and Mel Gibson special Hollywood ambassadors in 2025, but Stallone later said he declined the role after concluding that Hollywood was too fragmented for the assignment to be practical.<\/p>\n
Stallone has also publicly praised Trump, including at a 2024 Mar-a-Lago appearance.<\/p>\n
Today, Stallone remains active, starring in Tulsa King and continuing to work at an age when most actors have long been retired.<\/p>\n
His memoir, however, is less about preserving his invincible image than dismantling it.<\/p>\n
He admits to physical obsession, anxiety, professional failures, damaged relationships, and profound regret following the 2012 death of his son Sage.<\/p>\n
”I can make a castle out of regrets,” he says.<\/p>\n
And yet the final message of The Steps is not simply regret.<\/p>\n
Stallone describes himself as still working, still studying dialogue, still trying to love his family, and still moving forward.<\/p>\n
”You’re never too old to be in love,” he says, ”never too old to dance with the great memories that you’ve had.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 80, Sylvester Stallone is looking back \u2014 not at the myth of the invincible action hero, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,301806,156,4223,84577,111,139,69,79510,29446],"class_list":["post-612784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-emotional-deprivation","tag-entertainment","tag-hollywood","tag-john-rambo","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rocky-balboa","tag-sylvester-stallone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/newsmax_809\/599c5dc15f77dc1c3c7daa265c6653b3.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n