Sylvester Stallone reveals he suffered from an eating disorder when making his Rocky films

Sylvester Stallone has revealed he suffered from an eating disorder when he filmed his iconic Rocky movies.

The Hollywood superstar talked for the first time about the toll the tough guy films took in a candid interview in which he revealed he has struggled with his body ever since.

Speaking to the New York Times, the 80-year-old star 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.

‘Then it got to the point where I became bulimic. You heard it here first. I got down to 2.6 per cent 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 yoghurt and pudding, it’s not happening.’

He said the impact on his body has been ‘terrible’ and that he ‘takes a lot of pills to keep going’.

Stallone continued: ‘But yeah, I’ve abused my body. I’ve had nine back operations, two shoulder operations, three neck fusions. Everything is held together with baling wire, but I still want to stay in good shape.’

Ironically, the muscle-bound star said he felt most comfortable when he appeared on screen as an out-of-shape police officer in 1997’s Cop Land.

He told the Times: ‘It wasn’t until I did Cop Land, when I had to play the weakest guy in the room - partially deaf, overweight - that I felt somewhat liberated. Then things went sideways, and I just fell out of grace with Hollywood.’

The star, who also appeared in the Rambo films, has not appeared in a major film since Expendables 4 in 2023.

His new autobiography, The Steps: A Memoir, is scheduled for release on September 29. The title refers to the Philadelphia Museum of Art stairs he famously scaled in the original Rocky movie.

In the book, he talks about his troubled childhood and accused his parents of ‘never nurturing’ him to the point that he felt abandoned and neglected.

His father Frank was physically abusive and once punched him for bringing sandwich spread and not bread home from the store.

Another time, his father killed a cat. Stallone said: ‘There was a cat making noise outside the house. He went out, got the cat, took it into the laundry room, shot it and left it in the wash tub. I think he did that to impress me. Like, you’ll never be as tough as your old man.’

But he said that emotional trauma toughened him up and helped him survive in Hollywood.

He admitted he suffered anxiety and panic attacks which started at the age of 36: ‘The first time was when I was 36, and I was watching dailies, and then all of a sudden I stood up, and the hair on my neck went up, and I started getting hot, and I go, I’m dying, this is it, I’m on my way out. 

'And bang, down I went. Took a knee, crawled, rolled over, and now I’m in this dark movie theatre. Where the [expletive] did this come from? And then it happened again and again and again.’

He called his third wife Jennifer, the mother of his three daughters, ‘the greatest woman ever’.

Stallone knows he is nearing the end of his life, telling the Times: ‘All I can do is cherish every second because, let’s face it, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.’