Sylvester Stallone has never been one to leave his legends behind. He stepped back into the ring with Rocky Balboa (2006) and returned to the battlefield in Rambo (2008) before launching a brand-new powerhouse franchise, The Expendables (2010–present), where he led an all-star cast as fearless mercenary Barney Ross. In 2013, he scored another box office hit with Escape Plan and its sequels, proving his action dominance was far from over. Then, in 2015, Stallone revisited his most beloved role with Creed, transforming Rocky Balboa into a retired fighter turned mentor to Apollo Creed’s son, Donnie. The performance not only touched audiences worldwide but also earned Stallone his first Golden Globe Award and his third Academy Award nomination—astonishingly, for the same role that made him a star nearly four decades earlier. More recently, he has reinvented himself once again, taking television by storm as the sharp-witted mob boss in the Paramount+ crime drama Tulsa King (2022–present).

Born Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone on July 6, 1946, in Manhattan’s gritty Hell’s Kitchen, he grew up the eldest son of Jacqueline “Jackie” Stallone—a bold women’s wrestling promoter with Breton French and Ukrainian Jewish heritage—and Francesco “Frank” Stallone Sr., an Italian barber who immigrated from Gioia del Colle in the 1930s. His younger brother, Frank Stallone, would go on to build his own career as a musician and actor.

Stallone’s birth name is often cited as “Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone.” His mother once revealed that she originally named him “Tyrone” after Hollywood icon Tyrone Power, but his father insisted on Sylvester. As a boy, he carried the nickname “Binky,” though he later preferred “Mike” after schoolmates mockingly called him “Stinky.” Even his middle name has a story: “Gardenzio” comes from the Italian “Gaudenzio,” which Stallone would often shorten affectionately to “Enzio.”

Sylvester Stallone’s life began with struggle. Complications during his birth led doctors to use forceps, a procedure that accidentally damaged a nerve and left the lower left side of his face partially paralyzed. The result was the slurred speech and crooked snarl that, while once a source of ridicule, would later become one of his most defining trademarks on screen.

Childhood was anything but easy. Bullied for his appearance and speech, Stallone turned adversity into fuel, finding strength in bodybuilding and an outlet in acting. Much of his early life was unsettled—he spent time in foster care before reuniting with his family in Maryland at age five.

In the 1950s, his father opened a beauty school in Washington, D.C., while his mother carved her own path as a fitness pioneer by launching Barbella’s, a women’s gym ahead of its time. After his parents divorced, Stallone stayed with his father until he was 11, before eventually moving to Philadelphia to live with his mother and stepfamily at 15. There, the boy who had once been written off began shaping the grit and resilience that would one day define him as a Hollywood legend.