‘Became an obsession’: Sylvester Stallone reveals bulimia struggle, grim school attack

Hollywood actor Sylvester Stallone admitted to abusing steroids and struggling with bulimia while preparing for 1982’s Rocky III film.

The 80-year-old recounted the most difficult parts of his life in his upcoming memoir The Steps and in a wide-ranging profile published in The New York Times.

“Then it became an obsession,” Stallone told The New York Times, referencing the extreme measures he took to maintain his physique.

“Really bad. 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,” he said.

“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 movie star said he would do a six-week steroid cycle that he viewed as necessary to play boxer Rocky Balboa. He did not specify which performance-enhancing drugs he used.

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“Oh, my god, you have to. But you do it in a sensitive way – six weeks on, six weeks off,” Stallone responded to a question asking him if he took steroids.

“People go, ‘Oh, you don’t get that way naturally.’ No, you don’t. But that also took a terrible toll.”

He also claimed that he was once sent to a punishment block inside a residential school facility, where a fellow patient attacked him.

The Rocky star told The New York Times that he attended a high school that would punish misbehaving students by putting them in “a place called Park Lodge or the Snake Pit.”

“On the outside it looked like a big, old Tudor home from the ’20s, and then you walked inside and you entered the heart of insanity,” he recalled.

“The smell, the filth, people running around naked, clawing, hands tied, drooling. This is what they thought would impress you never to break the rules again.”

Stallone said he was left there for two weeks and was attacked by a “guy named Jay Bird.”

“They called him Jay Bird because he was always naked as a jaybird. And I go into the bathroom on the way to the food mess hall, and he comes in and comes around me and he’s like ripping on my throat and he is going into my pants and grabbing my groin.”

Stallone alleged that two guards ran in and began “beating the crap out of him [Bird] with razor straps.”

In the profile, the actor claimed his mother was not a nurturing figure and his father was unpredictable and violent.

Stallone’s memoir is not the first time he’s reflected on his colourful life. In 2023, he starred in biographical documentary called Sly which explored his 50-year career.

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