Sylvester Stallone biography Sylvester Stallone is an American film actor and director. At first, he grew up in poor conditions and had small jobs and minor theater and film roles. The sensational breakthrough came with the part of the boxer Rocky Balboa in Rocky (1976), for which he wrote the script himself. The film, which won an Oscar as best of the year in 1977, established him in terms of genre as a primitive, kind-hearted, and muscular hero with heavy eyelids and slurred speech. He reprised the role in four more Rocky films (1979, 1982, 1985, 1990), which he also wrote and directed, in addition to the fifth. Stallone succeeded as the warrior John Rambo in First Blood (1982) and its two sequels (1985, 1988). His other action films are Tango & Cash (1989), Cliffhanger (1993), and Assassins (1995). He tried his hand at comedy in Oscar (1991) and successfully approached a character in Cop Land (1997). After a career dip, he wrote and directed another Rocky film, Rocky Balboa (200...