Sylvester Stallone is getting vulnerable. The 80-year-old actor and filmmaker released his memoir, The Steps, on Tuesday, September 29, detailing his troubled childhood, which he kept private until now.
The Rocky actor appeared on the TODAY Show to promote the book and opened up to co-host Carson Daly about his struggles. Shockingly, Sylvester revealed that as a teenager, he was put into a psych ward for discipline.
"I was there for a couple weeks," the actor shared additionally with The New York Times. "It was wild."
© Alamy Stock PhotoHe went on: "At this school, there were five different departments for different ages. And in my age group, the teenagers, if you ever snuck out to see a girl or do something like that, you'd be reprimanded by being taken to a place called Park Lodge or the Snake Pit."
"On the outside it looked like a big, old Tudor home from the '20s, and then you walked inside and you entered the heart of insanity," Sylvester shared. "The smell, the filth, people running around naked, clawing, hands tied, drooling. This is what they thought would impress you never to break the rules again."
© Getty ImagesWhile the revelation that he was kept inside a psych ward was jarring, Sylvester noted: "But this to me was one of the better things that happened, too. I said, I know they're going to try to break me. I was attacked there. They tried to rip my groin off…"
The actor went on to describe how his classmate at the time attacked him. Sylvester remembered: "Two guards come in and they're beating the crap out of him with razor straps. I go, 'What the hell is wrong with him?' And they say: 'You're in a crazy house, boy. Nothing's wrong with him. He's crazy.'"
Sylvester Stallone's other revelations
During the early years of his career, many of Sylvester's roles required a specific physique. To maintain the looks he became known for, Sylvester admitted to a battle with bulimia.
© WireImage"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 for amfAR"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."
At 80, the Rambo actor is in good shape. "I'm sort of fit," he says of his body in his eighth decade. "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."
