Sylvester Stallone’s memoir Steps came out today, right on the 50th anniversary of Rocky. In it, he goes back over the years of rejection and career frustration that came before the 1976 film finally got made.
The book also puts fresh attention on something Stallone has admitted more recently: he used steroids while getting ready for Rocky III in 1982. And he’s blunt about what he thinks when he looks at the bigger, leaner, sharply cut bodies that now dominate superhero movies. In his words, “Nobody does it without additives and drugs , period.”
While promoting Steps, including a 50-minute talk with Tracy Smith at 92nd Street Y, Stallone called Hollywood an “obsessive body-worship kind of thing.” He connected that culture to bulimia, surgeries, and long-term physical damage. Coming from him, that hits a little differently. Rocky and Rambo helped set the standard for the action-hero physique, even if that look now seems almost restrained next to today’s comic-book bodies.
There still aren’t many hard numbers. USC’s Dr. Todd Schroeder has estimated that 50% to 75% of actors in superhero films use some form of PEDs, and comments from Frank Grillo, along with the speculation around Christian Bale and Chris Evans, show how uneven and murky the whole conversation still is.
If you care about Rocky, or about what’s really behind those blockbuster physical transformations, this is worth picking up. Steps is available now.
Author: Emmanuel Pina
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