Sylvester Stallone on the BBC in 1977: how “Rocky” got made against the odds
An interview from the BBC archive: in January 1977 Sylvester Stallone tells film critic Barry Norman how he fought to play Rocky Balboa himself.
Photo: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Video: YouTube · BBC Archive · youtube.com
On 23 January 1977 the BBC broadcast a conversation that is now a piece of film history: critic Barry Norman talks to Sylvester Stallone about “Rocky”. BBC Archive has published the interview on its official YouTube channel.
Stallone describes how hard it was to get his own script about an underdog boxer onto the screen. He was determined to play the lead himself – even though at the time he was known only as a “small part” actor. Studio executives would have preferred stars such as James Caan, Burt Reynolds or Ryan O’Neal.
Stallone got his way, and “Rocky” became an Oscar-winning classic. For fitness fans the character remains a symbol to this day: hard training, discipline and the will to keep going against the odds – an attitude Stallone himself embodies in the interview.
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