Nocturnal 
Sylvester Stallone has spent four decades being held up as the ultimate image of movie-star muscle. Now, at 80, he’s admitting what it actually cost him.
In a candid interview with The New York Times, published on 26 September, the Rocky star revealed he struggled with bulimia and used steroids while chasing the increasingly ripped physique his most famous franchise demanded of him. It’s the first time he’s spoken so openly about the toll it took.
“It became an obsession”
Stallone said his goal was never to look like a bodybuilder. He wanted something leaner and more athletic.
“I started to think: Design your body like a jaguar, a cat. Not big like Arnold [Schwarzenegger], but more feral and aggressive and very limber and athletic,” he told the paper. “It became an obsession. Really bad. It got to the point where I became bulimic.”
The actor said things reached their most extreme during 1982’s Rocky III, the third instalment of the boxing saga that made him a global star. “I got down to 2.6 percent body fat when I was doing Rocky III,” he said. “I couldn’t hold anything down. Or I didn’t want to keep it down because I became so obsessed with staying at that point of fitness, literally an obsessive body-worship kind of thing.”
Steroids a “terrible toll” on his body
Stallone also confirmed he used steroids during that era, insisting he wasn’t alone in doing so. “Nobody” achieves that level of conditioning “without additives and drugs, period,” he said, adding that he tried to use them “in a sensitive way—six weeks on, six weeks off.”
Even so, he admits it wasn’t without consequence. He says he’s since had nine back operations, two shoulder operations and three neck fusions, telling the paper: “Everything is held together with baling wire, but I still want to stay in good shape.”
He found some relief, he said, when he took the role of a dishevelled, overweight, partially deaf cop in 1997’s Cop Land, a part that went against everything his action-hero image had demanded. “I felt somewhat liberated,” he explained, though he noted his career took a dip around the same time.
Looking back, Stallone called his old approach to fitness “very masochistic” and said he’d do things very differently with hindsight. “It’s come at a terrible price,” he admitted. “If I could do it over again, I would say, ‘Let someone else carry the banner and don’t do your own stunts.'”
Where things stand now
Stallone’s comments have been widely picked up since the New York Times interview ran, with outlets including E! Online, People and the Daily Mail reporting on his admissions. The actor hasn’t suggested he’s seeking treatment or further comment beyond the original interview, but his willingness to speak so directly about body image and disordered eating marks a notable shift from an actor long associated with Hollywood’s toughest on-screen physiques.
For now, the 80-year-old says he still wants to “stay in good shape”, just without the extremes that defined his Rocky years.
