Sylvester Stallone

Name: Sylvester Stallone
Born: 6 July 1946 (Age: 64)
Where: New York, New York USA
Height: 5' 10"
Awards: 2 Oscar, 2 BAFTA and 2 Golden Globe Nominations.

It's hard to feel sympathy for Sylvester Stallone. After all, over the years his movies have made billions, with Stallone himself taking a sweet percentage. As John Rambo he's known the world over, as Rocky Balboa he's even loved. Few actors have enjoyed such long-term success, or such iconic status. Yet Stallone still has real cause for disappointment. He did not start out wanting to be an action hero. Indeed, his acting roots are in absurdist theatre and weighty, more experimental works.

 Throughout his career he has taken numerous steps to distance himself from that Rocky/Rambo persona, with no joy. The public always wanted him as he was - the damaged, simple, everyman hero - and would not let him go. And Stallone, who must take his share of the blame, lacked the artistic courage to leave those sure-fire hits behind. It takes sacrifice to become a Hollywood star - and a lot more to remain one.

He was born Sylvester Enzio Stallone on the 6th of July, 1946, named after his paternal grandfather. His mother, Jackie, had wanted to name him Tyrone, after action hero Tyrone Power, but her prophetic rhyme was not to be. Besides, the young boy would soon be nicknamed Binky.
 

Stallone's birth, in the charity ward of a public hospital (close by to the Actors' Studio - again prophetically), was a difficult process. Weighing in at 13 pounds, he did not come easily and was indeed tugged from the womb by an intern with a pair of forceps. This drastic and rather unprofessional procedure would sever a nerve above the baby's jaw, causing his famously drooping eyelid and lip and also a speech impediment that would take years of therapy to overcome.

Jackie was an aspiring dancer, one of the Long Stemmed Roses at the Billy Rose Diamond Horseshoe nightclub. Prone to weight-gain, though, she was not as long-stemmed as others, and so spent much of her working time selling cigarettes to the club patrons. Still she was ambitious and pursued her dancing career with zeal. Stallone's father, meanwhile, Frank, was a Sicilian immigrant who'd attempted to make it as a club singer but, wrecked by a stagefright that saw him performing from behind a curtain, had moved into hairdressing and was attempting to build a business.

With Jackie struggling as a dancer and Frank pumping all his profits back into his business, there was very little money to spare. For the first five years of Sylvester's life, the family would live in a cold-water flat in Hell's Kitchen, on 50th and 10th. During the week, with both parents working, the boy would be sent to live with a foster mother in Queens, an uncommunicative woman who left him to live in his own fantasy world, thus fuelling his nascent imagination.