That classic Rocky Balboa quote wasn’t just some fancy movie line, it actually depicted Sylvester Stallone’s journey through life, “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
The victories from a young age were few and far between. Stallone admitted that he wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing-looking kid, which caused him to be an outcast.
His youth was filled with dark moments, ”I`d sit and swat flies off cars with a lead pipe, I`d paint the house black, hack up Santa Claus, fire arrows from a classroom window, jump off a roof with an umbrella and break my arm.”
Stallone simply didn’t want to be himself. He was struggling to survive with just $100 and to make matters worse, his wife was pregnant. The actor caught a huge break thanks to a script he wrote up. Stallone knows what it’s like to be broke and to be at the bottom of the list. Even when the Rocky script was discovered, he was offered a six-figure salary for the script, though without him in the starring role. Despite being broke, he rejected the offer and we can all say things work out for the better.
Stallone doesn’t forget where he came from, discussing his darkest moments on Instagram, “This is exactly what an unemployed, going nowhere fast, 22-year-old actor/writer living in a $71 a month apartment looks like. There’s always a way out if you Want to get out. There’s always a way up if you want to REALLY go up.” Stallone would even post a picture of his status at that point.
Soon enough, Stallone would change the game, becoming an icon of the ’80s. The many Rocky films along with the likes of Rambo had fans on the edge of their seats, to this day, the films are iconic and viewed on the norm by hardcore fans.
Things worked out for Stallone and then some, along with his career success and rising up, he’s also a proud father to five children, Sage, Sistine, Seargeoh, Sophia Rose, and Scarlet Rose. To sum up, the man went from living in terminals to grossing billions of dollars thanks to the likes of Rocky and Rambo. There were bumps along the way but as Rocky says, “It ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”