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His transformations began early. Stallone was born in a New York City charity ward. A forceps delivery severed a facial nerve, paralyzing one side of his lip, chin and tongue. Though he is a colorfully articulate speaker, Stallone must carefully pick his way through sentences. Says he: "I've got what you'd call a Mafioso voice, and I'm self-conscious about it." Father Frank, a Sicilian immigrant, moved the family to Silver Springs, Md., and opened a beauty shop. His mother Jacqueline, a former "Long Stem Rose" chorine in a Billy Rose revue, started her own business, a workout salon. The family exercise, however, was social climbing. It left a bitter taste. "My father wanted to be accepted into a certain class, so we played 'poor man's polo,' " says Stallone. "A good pony cost $15,000; ours cost $200. Sometimes they asked us not to play." After his parents' divorce, Stallone "did time" in a number of schools. Taunted by classmates for his looks ("I was a Mister Potato Head with all the pieces in the wrong place") and even more unusual name, he began lifting weights at 13.
He used his early memories when he began scriptwriting: "Remember the scene in Rocky where Adrian said, 'My father told me that I wasn't born with much of a body, so I should develop my brain,' and Rocky said that it was just the opposite with him? That was me. Muscle and physique were my calling cards."
After attending college in Switzerland and at the University of Miami, the actor was ready to take New York by storm. Casting Director Rhonda Young, then a talent agent, tried to get work for the hulking Stallone. "I sent him to Ivory Soap," she says. "They were looking for a greaser, but they sent him back. They said there was a limit to seediness." When he worked as an usher in a moviehouse, he fell in love with another usher, Sasha Czack. They got married, and the bride typed scripts that Stallone wrote in off-hours.
Together they went West, but Hollywood was not welcoming either. Irwin Winkler, who along with Robert Chartoff has produced all the Rocky films, remembers his first impression: "In comes this big lug who weighed 220 Ibs., didn't talk well and acted slightly punch-drunk. He said he had an idea for a boxing film. He wanted to star in it."
Against odds as great as Rocky ever faced, Stallone held out. United Artists insisted that the movie come in at $1 million, and the production became a Rocky story in itself. The result was a low-rent victory. The board of health even shut down the commissary. "We were so poor," Shire remembers, "we had stalls instead of trailers." Stallone's acting salary was $620 a week. "I would have done it for nothing," he says.
The enormous success of Rocky—ten Oscar nominations and Best Picture of 1976 Award—was more than Stallone could handle. "I resented people confusing me with Rocky," he says now. "I wore white suits with flowers on the side. Rocky isn't very bright, so I went on talk shows to expound on things I knew nothing about. Rocky's decent, so I indulged in dime-store humor. I was a walking whoopee cushion."