Sylvester Stallone Says He’ll ‘Never Come to Terms’ with His Parents Skipping the Oscars the Night He Won for Rocky

Sylvester Stallone says he’s proud of what he managed to push through — even when the industry and his own life circumstances were stacked against him.

During a conversation with Gayle King on CBS Mornings, Stallone, 79, looked back on the early days of Rocky, the role that would define his career. King noted that studios weren’t initially enthusiastic about him as the film’s lead. Stallone agreed: they liked the script, but not the idea of him starring in it.

When King mentioned that he needed the money at the time, Stallone recalled how the offers kept climbing as the studio tried to buy the story without him attached. “It started at 20, then it went to 80, then it went to 160, then it went to 360…” he said.

While that figure may sound modest compared to today’s blockbuster deals, it would translate to roughly $2.5 million now. Even so, Stallone said he couldn’t accept it. “I couldn’t do it,” he remembered.

Rocky would go on to win three Academy Awards and become the highest-grossing movie of 1976 — a triumph that Stallone said came with unexpected heaviness.

“It’s a volcanic moment, and then it was very sad,” he admitted. He described the complicated feeling of arriving at a pinnacle moment only to realize the people he most wanted there weren’t willing to share it with him. “You want people that you love that denied you, now you’re here, you’re at the Oscar, and they don’t want to go… You realize that, at that moment, that you’re never ever going to come to terms with this…”

He clarified that he was referring to his parents. “It’s a real learning lesson, Gayle, that parents should really wise up,” he said.

Stallone compared children to “soft clay,” saying that what happens early on leaves permanent marks. “You mold them, and you dent them, and you hurt them, or you drop them off the table, and they’re not the same shape anymore,” he said. “I still walk around with it. And I wish I couldn’t. And I pray, and I do everything, but it’s always there.”

In his 2023 Netflix documentary Sly, Stallone also shared a story about the physical trait many people associate with him: his distinctive “snarl.” He said it began at birth after his mother went into labor while riding a bus, leading to partial facial paralysis.

“Even though she was nine months pregnant, she kept riding around on the bus,” he said in the film. “She [went] into labor. Somebody was smart enough to get her off the bus, they carried her into a charity ward. And that’s where I was brought into the world via this accident which kind of paralyzed all the nerves on the side of my mouth. So I was born with this snarl.”

Later in the documentary, Stallone and his brother Frank reflected on their parents’ volatile relationship and the instability it created at home.

“I’d be up in bed and you’d just hear them screaming and yelling,” Frank said in the film. The brothers also recalled spending large parts of their childhood in boarding houses rather than living at home.

“The majority of the time, I was living in a boarding house,” Stallone said in the documentary, “basically 12 months a year, never went home, because they just didn’t have time, they were both working.”