I became interested in Sylvester Stallone when I was about fourteen. I liked him before, but there was a moment when I paid closer attention to this wonderful man with an amazing destiny, whom fans affectionately call Sly. Once (we were about fourteen or fifteen), Pavel asked me: — Which actor will you be? — and at that time I only liked two. I still consider them the most wonderful actors to this day. Although, now I love many others besides... — Schwarzenegger! — I replied. — No! Schwarzenegger is already me! Choose someone else! — Then Stallone! — That won't work! Stallone is already Zhenya! — Zhenya was also our friend, Pavel's neighbor. — I don't care! I will be Stallone! — I didn't give in. Probably, not wanting and fearing most of all to end up as some Van Damme. A year or two ago, I downloaded from the net and read as many articles about Stallone as I could find. And recently I re-read them. I want to say: I bow before this man! In my opinion, this is the greatest actor. Always completely and utterly devoted to the role, living it. And the genres of his works are so diverse: comedy, drama, disaster movies. Action, thrillers, philosophical, science fiction, children's! Besides that, he is a wonderful director, screenwriter. Producer! For me, Stallone is a role model. I adore many of his films: "Rocky", "First Blood", "Cliffhanger", "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!", "Daylight", "Oscar", "Spy Kids 3D". But my absolute favorites are his latest works: Rocky Balboa (Rocky 6), Driven, and John Rambo (Rambo 4). I love these films very much for their directness and sincerity. For the fact that they are very real! These pictures are good because I feel: Sylvester can now afford (and I am glad for it!) to make the films he wants. About humane people. About love, friendship, trust. About real people who are truly beautiful. And I am so grateful to him for all these latest films and for the entire six-part "Rocky"! Today, Sly is not making "films you can make a ton of money on", but real CINEMA! Several sources I read about him say the following: Stallone's path to fame was not easy. Until the age of thirty, he was not taken not only for roles in movies but even in plays. Sylvester, the son of an immigrant from Italy and a mother from Ukraine, had part of his cheek, lips, and tongue paralyzed from birth. Many years passed before the strange smirk, slurred speech, and large sad eyes became the idol's trademark. Before becoming an actor, Stallone had to try many other professions. He was a bouncer in restaurants, a cleaner of lion cages at the zoo, and for a time earned his living by playing cards. Only in 1969 was he able to get a more or less decent job as an usher in a small New York theater. Working with him was a sweet and simple girl, Sasha Czack, who showed the way to latecomers. She fell in love with Sylvester at first sight and firmly believed: he is a future star! Soon they moved to California, where they got married in the summer of 1972. Sasha gave him two sons. Unfortunately, one of them was born sick and suffered from autism. The complex atmosphere that developed in the actor's family eventually led to a divorce in 1985. But the divorce did not prevent Sylvester from seeing his children. When the eldest, Sage, grew up, his father gave him a role in "Rocky V". And in those years, when he was just trying to break through, when no director wanted to deal with an actor who spoke poorly, he had to seek help from a speech therapist. For several months, day and night, Sylvester read Shakespeare's plays, books by Edgar Allan Poe and Tolstoy onto a tape recorder. Acquaintance with the classics made such a strong impression on Stallone that he took up the pen and began writing scripts for his future films. However, even as a student at the University of Miami, he tried writing. Naturally, it was written only "for the drawer". Once he saw a match between famous boxers Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner on TV. And suddenly it dawned on him: why not make a film about...? Stallone "made" himself. He wrote the script for a film about a boxer from a poor neighborhood and the love he met. Universal Studios rejected six versions of his scripts right off the bat, but accepted the seventh, titled "Rocky", with a bang. The producers offered the author a huge amount of money — 350 thousand dollars. However, a big surprise awaited them: Stallone, who had a little over 100 dollars and a pregnant wife, refused, offering them to buy the script for one dollar and let him play the lead role. It was then that Universal vice president Irwin Winkler gave Sylvester the nickname Sly (the cunning one). In just 900 thousand dollars and 28 days, "Rocky" was made, the best film of 1976, which grossed 225 million dollars and won three Oscars. Stallone became one of the most popular actors in the world. The stunning success of "Rocky" and the continuation of the saga about the poor boxer completely changed his life. Stallone met a new love, Jennifer Flavin. As he puts it himself, "loving him for who he is". Their love withstood many difficulties and even a long separation, but to this day, Stallone and Jennifer are still together. And they have two daughters. Sylvester has won the "Golden Raspberry" nine times — an American award for the worst achievements in cinema. But despite the clear dislike of critics and film academics, the actor became a favorite performer for millions of people around the world. And the phrases of his characters, like "You can lose and remain a winner", became the life credo of millions of fans in different countries. I personally like the phrase spoken in the last "Rocky" by the main character to his son. It's not about boxing, but with a philosophical subtext: "It's not about how hard you hit! It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward!" Stallone was many times given to understand that dramatic art was not his forte, but he stubbornly continued to write scripts and act. And if directors didn't pay attention to him, he took his acting fate into his own hands. His entire career in cinema is like a fight for a place in the Hollywood firmament, which he continues with dignity even in his seventh decade of life. Perhaps that is why his main movie hero — boxer Rocky Balboa — is an undefeated champion! It seems that life only begins at sixty. While enemies were sending him into retirement, Stallone decided to play his trump card, which had saved him more than once. The film about Rocky Balboa with the same name could have become a beautiful soulful song. Naturally, detractors laughed again. What kind of Rocky can we talk about when Stallone is already so old? Especially since he was going to perform all the stunts himself. The actor turned out to be cunning: in the script, Rocky is the same age as Sly is in real life. With this alone, he saved himself from mockery about his age. In recent years, Stallone not only acts in the most diverse roles but often acts as a screenwriter, director, and writer. According to acquaintances, he has a wonderful collection of paintings. Today, Stallone is a charming and witty conversationalist, well-acquainted with literature, theater, and fine arts. Not only has his appearance changed (bright shirts and massive gold jewelry have been replaced by impeccably tailored strict suits), but also his inner world. And the fact that Stallone is moving from muscular supermen to roles of a completely different plan today confirms this. I want to quote a part of an article by some author not specified under it (I dug it up on the Internet) dedicated to the last "Rocky". "Films are sometimes made for fame, money... But the most important viewer for every filmmaker is himself. And the most wonderful thing about all this is that a person makes a film for himself, for his own sake, about himself, and even somewhere with his own money, and the result turns out to be interesting far beyond the limits of a single skull. Thirty years after the first part of "Rocky", Stallone made a completely different film, where the same Italian immigrant runs into the sunset and boxes with a carcass, and in the finale goes into the ring. But the meaning in everything that is happening is completely different, because for him, so many years have really passed, and he has long been not so in demand in the ring, and his own little restaurant for telling Hollywood tales to random visitors is also a past stage for him, and young and early ones shine on the box, and there is salt deposition in the joints and an unspent, unreleased beast sits in the chest. Stallone made "Rocky Balboa" about himself, just like that first film thirty years ago. He made it extremely honestly, without discounts for age and "winking at the viewer" — saying, everything is not so bad, I'm still o-ho-ho! No, he is no longer o-ho-ho. And the viewer in the mass no longer remembers who this is, our Sly, is he from the eighties? "Rather from the seventies," Sly answers us with an unhealed accent, with some self-irony. And honesty in our age is equal to naivety, and naivety is equal to simplicity. What kind of plot twists, why an action movie, complex architectural structures instead of dialogues, psychological musings instead of simple worldly wisdom. Sly wanted to tell his worldview from today, looking at himself then through montage inserts of "archival footage". From such naked autobiography of what is happening, it sometimes even becomes awkward, but this time a lot of questions are removed — because in the end, he really won. Yes, Stallone is from the cohort of those rapidly leaving, whom we remember more from video salons of the early nineties than from cinemas of the early two-thousands. At one time, he did what few are capable of now — he changed the entire Hollywood film industry to new patterns, and even if he is not needed for the result of his deeds now, this is not a reason to pass by his story, disdainfully grimacing at archaic editing, a heavy accent, and sclerotic veins on a bare torso. Stallone is good in the film like a boulder that will not move anywhere, but which has seen too much in its time to just go into obscurity. Yes, this is "old-timer cinema", akin to grumbling on a bench, but a film so honest to itself that it is simply impossible not to respect it. And the viewer felt this, allowing it to both pay off and collect a due share of viewer and professional praise." And I read this comment from a chat dedicated to the picture "Rocky Balboa": "Professionally, Stallone has proven his veteran competitiveness. Once again, you are convinced that in his field of activity (in the genre of boxing drama and action film), Sly is undoubtedly an extraordinary phenomenon capable of seriously declaring his existence again when almost no one expects it from him. And if you remember how critics bullied him with their "Golden Raspberries", how women dumped him (and almost ruined him in the process). Let's keep silent about the son's serious illness? Such stresses would be enough for several lives and about the same number of sudden deaths! But no, the person lives, fights, and eventually wins!" Stallone wanted to remind the viewer of the immutable values of human relationships with the final part of the "Rocky" cycle. Old-fashioned for modern youth: so be it! But the more the world plunges into "modern-civilized" cinematic darkness, the more this darkness is cut by the light from those film works whose authors sincerely wish the viewer Goodness and Justice. "Rocky Balboa" is the sixth and, to date, the last film about a Humane Human. A continuation of the story about the life of a wonderful athlete — sensitive, kind, responsive, truly worthy of respect and imitation. I remember I returned from the cinema in January 2007 and remained under the impression of the viewing for several more days. Honestly: I haven't seen such MAGNIFICENT pictures for a long time! Although I can quite call myself sophisticated in cinema. And I don't mind watching it again, in the cinema! I will definitely watch it on the computer more than once. Stallone went all out in the new film: he not only played the lead role, wrote the script, and directed, but also produced the picture! I love the first, second, fifth, and sixth parts of "Rocky" the most. The intermediate third and fourth, to my taste, are not as good. But without them, there would not have been SUCH a continuation! "Rocky", in my opinion, is a cinematic masterpiece. An epic. About his films "Driven" and "Rambo 4" (the only one of all "Rambo" films shot as Sly intended, when no one, especially in the third part, "refined" the script he originally invented, turning Stallone's idea into a simple action movie, just to "make money"), one can also say with full confidence that these are films about people with beautiful souls. Stallone, wise with life experience, "seeps" into his works with his "philosophy of kindness". It's not him saying so. It's me seeing it that way. It is difficult to talk about the work of a living person, because this person is a process "moving and developing" together with his creations. And therefore, that's all I have for today regarding Sylvester Stallone. Long life to him and creative success! And a huge human thank you for the CINEMA! Thank you! P.S. In 2007, Sylvester Stallone, according to rumors, was awarded "For many years of cinematic achievements in boxing". This decision was made by the Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA), and this award was presented for the first time. "People perceive the character of Rocky Balboa as authentic," Stallone said when he learned about this award. — "A lot of people asked me about my boxing career. It seems that they really want to believe that Rocky exists. Once I thought that people would overcome their admiration for this character, but this did not happen. Thirty years later, Rocky has such an influence on people that I could not have imagined!" P.P.S. A curious fact! Currently, Stallone often shops in stores for professional artists and paints canvases in the style of impressionists. "Although I don't know what I should do in art after Van Gogh," he ironically evaluates himself. Morning of December 02, 2008