Inspiring Lives

Are you tired of your current situation, ever wonder if things would change for the better? Then you're in the right place! Our inspiration for this post is the one and only Sylvester Stallone.

Well, as you may well know, Sylvester Stallone a.ka. Sly is an American actor, director and writer. You may also be familiar with some of his movies, I guess you're already mentioning a few, well if you can't, I got you covered. Let's get to it.

source:nbcnews.com

The star was born at a charity hospital in New York. During the labour, his mother suffered some complications and the doctors had to use forceps to pull him out, this led to the damage of his facial nerves which eventually paralyzed the left side of his face affecting his chin, tongue and lip, you may have noticed his slurred way of speaking. Growing up he was bullied a lot due to his looks, his coping mechanisms were body building and acting. 

source: Esquire.com

Did you know that as a child he was sickly and suffered rickets at some point? His parents were always fighting and ended up divorcing when he was 11 and stayed with his father. He had a traumatic childhood, he was enrolled into several schools but would oftentimes get expelled for his behaviour. His grades were dreadful and was always picked on by his classmates for being "different".

 source:fanpop.com

At 15, he moved to Philadelphia with his mum and her new husband, by this time he had begun lifting weights and appearing in school plays. On graduation, he recieved an athletic scholarship for the American college of Switzerland.

He was a girl's athletic coach and in his spare time, he starred in a school production of Arthur Miller's death of a salesman. This experience inspired him to become an actor, he started studying drama at the university of Miami until he decided to move to New York in 1969.

 source: goldenglobes.com

 You'd think that would be all but, out of desperation after being evicted from his apartment and finding himself homeless for several days, he accepted his first starring role in the pornography film "The party at kitty and stud's" in 1970. He was paid $200 for two days work. Prior to seeing a casting notice for the film, He had slept at the port authority bus terminal in New York for three weeks and according to him, it was the end of his rope. By this time, he began to focus more on writing screenplays and scripts.

He was so broke that he was unable to pay rent or afford his food. His lowest point came when he tried to sell his dog Butkus at a liquor store to any stranger at all as he couldn't feed the him anymore. He sold him for as low as $40 to a random man. Sylvester said they were both hungry, thin and living in a flophouse above a subway stop.

 source: Snopes.com

 Well, after watching a fight between Mohammed Ali and Chuck Wepner in which Wepner lost at the 15th round, he got the inspiration to write the screenplay for his movie Rocky. He wrote it for about 20 hours. He tried to sell it and got an offer of $125,000 for the script, but he had one condition, that he starred in the movie as the main character Rocky Balboa but he was turned down because they wanted a real movie superstar for the role, they said he looked and talked funny. He left with the script and never gave up.

Some weeks later, the studio offered him $250,000 without the condition yet again, he refused and was later offered $350,000 which he eventually turned down. Crazy right? for someone that could barely feed but he knew what he wanted, the producers wanted his movie but not him and he wasn't up for that, he insisted to be in the movie. Finally they agreed and offered him $35,000 for the script and allowed him star in it.

Source: dailymail.co.uk

Guess the first thing he did with money....yes yes, you're right! He bought back his dog! yipppppyy!!! Buying Butkus back wasn't easy either, as he  waited at the same liquor store for 3 days for the man he sold the dog to hoping he'd come by the store. When he finally met him, he made offers of  $500, $1000 which were all rejected knowing how desperate Sylvester was.

After much deliberation, he paid $15,000 for the same dog he had sold for $40 but his love for his best friend was more than anything who according to him was with him when he owned 2 pairs of pants, shoes that had holes in them and dreams of being successful were far away as the sun, Butkus later appeared in the Rocky series.

 credit:celebmix.com

 Rocky is considered one of Sylvester Stallone's most commercially successful movies till date. It won many awards in 1977 like Academy awards for best picture, directing and best film editing, Golden globe award for best motion picture, Directors Guild of America Awards for outstanding directing, David di Donatello for best foreign actor, and in 1978 Japan academy prize for outstanding foreign language. 

  A statue of the character Rocky Balboa was placed at Philadelphia art museum.

Credit: pinterest.com

Sylvester Stallone is known for his roles Rocky and Rambo, if you haven't seen these movies you should. Some of his movies you may want to check out are, The expendables(franchise), Escape to victory, Cobra, Escape plan, creed, bullet to the head to mention a few.

Today, this same man who was homeless, couldn't feed, sold his dog is one of the greatest movie stars ever. Being broke is not the end, being in debt isn't either, life is tough but you are tougher, difficult periods are the best moments to learn and never give up.

  I'll leave you with this quote:

"Until you start believing in yourself, you ain't gonna have a life"  Sylvester Stallone.