Before Sylvester Stallone became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, he had only $60; $43.60 was allocated for rent.
But even while trying to make a living in New York City, the future “Rocky” icon refused to give up on his dream.
In his new memoir, “The Steps,” Stallone recounts the years before fame, including his arrival in New York in 1969; Despite poverty, rejection and uncertainty, she is determined to become an actress.
The 80-year-old told Fox News Digital that even in his darkest moments, he held on to the belief that his life would eventually change for the better.
“I think it comes from naivety and the craziness of youth that you still have that feeling of ‘I can do this, I can break the mold,'” Stallone said.
“I haven’t been defeated enough in life yet to say it’s over because as a player I would say if you haven’t made it by the age of 30, 99% of the time you’ll never make it. I wasn’t aware of that, so I just kept going.”
“When I was really down in New York, I wasn’t focused on, ‘Oh God, you’re going to be poor,'” Stallone said.
“I believe that if you make every effort, if you deny yourself every moment of going to the movies, every moment of going out with a girl, if you let go of all that and commit to it, you will know 100% if you have a chance to be the character you always wished you could be.”
Stallone never stopped believing that one day he would succeed as an actor.
After dropping out of the American College in Switzerland without graduating and leaving the University of Miami just a few credits away from a drama degree, Stallone returned to New York City with little to his name.
He rented a room so cramped he later compared it to the minimum recommended size for a federal prison cell. He was sharing the bathroom with 10 people.
Stallone also found a job as an usher at a movie theater, earning just $34 a week. The job has become filmmaking training, he said. He kept his dream alive by reviewing the movies he watched every night.
Stallone said he would shower with his clothes on to save on laundry costs. If he was lucky enough to find a bar of soap that didn’t have “the odd hair” stuck to it, he would use it to lather “my shirt, my pants, my underwear, my socks, and myself.”
“I could never afford to go to the laundromat,” Stallone said. “My wife thinks it’s so disgusting, ‘Why would you shower with your clothes on?’ And I said, ‘It seemed logical to me at the time rather than going to the laundromat. But this was a rented house. It was very bad. But you’re doing your best to survive.’”
To stave off hunger, Stallone would eat spoonfuls of cottage cheese, followed by three or four raw eggs. She later recalled in the book that he offered her chicken breasts and apple juice.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense numerically and financially,” he said. “Of course it’s all wrong. It’s terrible. I’m actually surprised I didn’t get salmonella. It’s quite remarkable really. But those two things happen at a certain time of year because in the summer the cottage cheese would rot and the eggs would go bad.”
“But if you brought it from October onwards, it would sit on the windowsill until March. So this became my refrigerator. I thought it was very useful at the time. There are no dishes. You drink the egg, so you don’t have to wash anything. You don’t need a fork. And cottage cheese, it’s a spoon and you throw the glass away.”
“I wouldn’t recommend this diet to anyone,” Stallone wrote in the book. “But if you’re young and poor it’ll be enough, so I used eating raw eggs in ‘Rocky’ to give some insight into the ways Rocky approaches his life.”
Stallone had a dollar or two a day for food. He needed a job, and urgently.
One of Stallone’s first jobs was cleaning the lion cages at the Central Park Zoo. The smell was bad enough, but that wasn’t what scared him.
“I was fearing for my life too,” he wrote. “The lions were always close, always watching. They looked through me. They were behind a set of bars, but that didn’t stop the big, sad creatures from sticking their huge noses between the bars to sniff me.
“Their breathing made an eerie moaning sound, as if they already knew what I would taste like.”
During this period, Stallone was repeatedly rejected by agents, including one who criticized his deep voice and asymmetrical mouth, two characteristics that would later become signatures of his on-screen persona.
While walking home one day, he saw a “Help wanted” sign at the Dover Deli and started a 6pm to 2am shift. Even though he was able to save enough money to buy a coat to brave the city’s harsh winter, this is one concert he can’t miss.
“Every customer gets grumpy about this and that, ‘Hey, there’s not enough coleslaw in here. This sandwich should weigh an ounce and a half more,'” Stallone said with a laugh.
“You’d be shocked. I learned to be a really good fish cutter, like fish meat on a bagel. I’d still hear, ‘I can’t see through the salmon.’ They wanted the cut to be so thin that light could actually be seen. Oh man. And you’re cutting your fingers, too.”
“And then the characters that come in at two in the morning, the drunks and the gangsters, are incredible,” Stallone continued.
“Anyone who walks into a place at two in the morning and asks for a sandwich would be shocked. It’s a very colorful situation. And of course I went to jail, but that’s only because of that stupid deli.”
“I thought I was living a good, decent life,” he said. “But by today’s standards, you were on the verge of oblivion.”
After an argument at the deli, Stallone found himself handcuffed in the back of a police car; He still had his apron and badge on. He was sent to “The Tombs,” New York’s violent detention facility, or, as Stallone calls it, “the place of nightmares.”
He was placed in a 20-foot by 20-foot holding cell with at least 25 other men. One of the men was hitting another man’s head into a small hole that the prisoners used as a toilet.
A criminal court judge eventually released Stallone.
“I grabbed the apron, scooped it up and threw it in the trash as I walked out the door,” she wrote.
Today, Stallone has no regrets.
“If you don’t sacrifice completely and fail, you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering, ‘Why didn’t I try harder? Why didn’t I use the talent God gave me to be the absolute best?’ “You suffer,” Stallone said.
“If you fail, you can say, ‘I tried.’ People can never point their fingers in your face and say, ‘You didn’t try hard enough.’ But my biggest fear was leaving something on the table.”
Looking back, Stallone said those difficult years taught him a lesson that still resonates in “Rocky” decades later.
“‘Rocky’ still points out that it really is possible if you’re willing to completely sacrifice the good times, the pleasures and the escapades for the cause,” he said. “There are no halfway points.”