It’s no secret that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone engaged in one of Hollywood’s most unforgettable feuds. Beginning in the late 1970s, the pair were constantly in competition as they battled to usurp the other for the role of cinema’s leading action star.
While some of their rivalry has resulted in downright cruel behaviour, such as Stallone allegedly providing a journalist with false claims that Schwarzenegger is a secret Nazi sympathiser, the pair have also engaged in some hilarious acts of deception. For example, Schwarzenegger convinced Stallone to star in the terrible movie Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
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Schwarzenegger said: “I read the script, and it was a piece of shit. Let’s be honest. I say to myself, ‘I’m not going to do this movie…’ Then they went to Sly, and Sly called me: ‘Have they ever talked to you about doing this movie?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I was thinking about doing it. This is a really brilliant idea, this movie.’ When he heard that, because he was in competition, he said, ‘Whatever it takes, I’ll do the movie.’ And of course the movie went major into the toilet.”
Stallone believes the film is “possibly one of the worst movies in the entire solar system, including movies about aliens we’ve never seen… a flatworm could have written a better script than Stop!” Or my mom will shoot.”
This is just scratching the surface of the Stallone-Schwarzenegger feud, which is so extensive that it has its own Wikipedia page. These days, however, the duo are no longer enemies, having shared the screen several times in the 2010s.
Moreover, in 2022, Stallone presented his favorite films with Schwarzenegger during a Discord AMA. His first choice was one of the star’s most iconic films, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, directed by James Cameron.
He joked: “I tell him… I said you make the easiest movies in the world, where you just walk in the middle of the street and beat the crap out of everyone and no one will hurt you. […] Unfortunately, all my characters are beaten.”
Schwarzenegger’s role as the titular cyborg is one of his most famous performances, helping propel him to further fame. The film became the highest-grossing film of 1991 and won four Academy Awards, including Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup.
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However, Stallone is also a big fan of Schwarzenegger’s other collaboration with Cameron, 1994’s True Lies. The action-comedy film starred Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill Paxton and Tom Arnold alongside Schwarzenegger and became one of the most successful films of the year.
According to Stallone: True Lies was very, very good because he put everything together in it. Wit, romance, charm and then great action with a great director, that’s it.”