Sylvester Stallone is opening up about the toll maintaining his appearance took on him.
The Rocky star has been working in the spotlight for over five decades, making a name for himself with the 1976 boxing movie Rocky, which centered on having a certain muscular physique.
The film, which he wrote, spawned five follow-ups as well as the Creed trilogy, also earning him three Oscar wins for the film, but it also took a massive toll on his mind and body.
© Getty ImagesSpeaking with the New York Times' Lulu García-Navarro ahead of the release of his memoir The Steps, Sylvester, 80, admitted to a battle with bulimia to maintain the looks he became known for, for both Rocky as well as Rambo.
"It became very intimate," he said of his relationship with his body, describing it as his "armor" and explaining: "I looked at Rocky: very smooth, very normal-looking guy. And then I said, I think the character would start to become a bit more vain. And then in Rambo, you're playing a warrior, so you'd be a little bit more animalistic. You wouldn't be so smooth."
He remembered thinking: "Design your body like a jaguar, a cat. Not big like Arnold [Schwarzenegger], but more feral and aggressive and very limber and athletic."
© Getty Images"Then it became an obsession. Really bad," Sylvester noted, confessing: "It got to the point where I became bulimic. You heard it here first. I got down to 2.6 percent body fat when I was doing Rocky III."
"I couldn't hold anything down," he continued. "Or I didn't want to keep it down because I became so obsessed with staying at that point of fitness, literally an obsessive body-worship kind of thing."
Sylvester also admitted to using steroids to maintain his look. "Nobody does it without additives and drugs, period. I don't care what they say. It isn't as though you're a junkie, but if you're going to work out and try to stay in shape for six months straight, and you're eating yogurt and pudding, it's not happening."
© Getty ImagesSylvester noted that he found it impossible to get to a certain physique without steroids, but that it "also took a terrible toll." It wasn't until he worked on 1997's Cop Land when he "had to play the weakest guy in the room" that he "felt somewhat liberated."
© Getty Images"I've abused my body. I've had nine back operations, two shoulder operations, three neck fusions. Everything is held together with baling wire, but I still want to stay in good shape," he added.
"I'm sort of fit," he says of his body at 80. "But I take a lot of pills to keep going. It's come at a terrible price. If I could do it over again, I would say, 'Let someone else carry the banner and don't do your own stunts.' I don't know what it was about hurting myself all the time."
