Sylvester Stallone reveals he felt unloved when collecting his Rocky Oscar after his parents refused to join ceremony

Sylvester Stallone has revealed how his life-changing moment at the Academy Awards in 1977 was tinged with great sadness.

The actor's movie Rocky, which he wrote and starred in, was named Best Picture and set him on the path to Hollywood stardom.

Reflecting on the moment in a recent interview with CBS, Stallone shared that the absence of his parents on his big night deeply affected him and continues to do so.

Recalling the moment the nominations were announced during the awards show, he recalled: 'I’m sitting there, I go, "There’s no way we’re gonna win." I even had people, believe it or not, other competitive writers, come up to me and go, "You’re not gonna win." Flat out.'

The actor, 80, went on, per People: 'I’m hearing things... and then the applause went and…I wanted to like, sink into the seat. And I really did. It wasn’t as though I felt elation. I actually felt sad a little bit, because I wanted it to be a festive thing, family thing... like, "Okay! We arrived." And it was like, nah.

'I realized that the only love I’m ever gonna really feel at that point in my life is the love of people that are in the dark. You know what I mean?' 

Rocky beat Taxi Driver, Network and All the President's Men to take the top honors at the Oscars and Stallone also received a Best Actor nomination for his role as Rocky Balboa, losing to Network's Peter Finch.

Just last year, Stallone admitted in a CBS Mornings interview with Gayle King that he still hasn't been able to come to terms with the fact that his parents skipped the Oscars ceremony.

'It’s a volcanic moment, and then it was very sad,' he shared. 'You want people that you love that denied you; now you’re here, you’re at the Oscars, 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 explained: 'I still walk around with it. And I wish I couldn’t. And I pray, and I do everything, but it’s always there.'

The latest comments by Stallone come as he promotes his new memoir The Steps.

Speaking to The New York Times about his new book, published on September 29,  Stallone got candid about previously suffering from an eating disorder.

The Hollywood superstar spoke publicly for the first time about the toll his films took on his body image.

He said of his physique: 'It was my armour. I looked at Rocky: Very smooth, very normal-looking guy. And then I said, I think the character would start to become more vain.

'So 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 continued: 'Then it got to the point where I became bulimic. You heard it here first. I got down to 2.6% body fat when I was doing Rocky III, and 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.'

The actor admitted using steroids to bulk up his frame, adding: 'Nobody does it without additives and drugs, period. 

'I don't care what they say. It isn't as though you're a junkie, but if you're going to work out and try to stay in shape for six months straight, and you're eating yogurt and pudding, it's not happening.'