WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
- Sylvester Stallone reveals that his volatile father physically abused him and that his mother never hugged him.
- The actor omitted some of his darkest childhood experiences from his memoir because he did not want readers’ pity.
- Stallone says his painful upbringing made him tough, but in the wrong way.
- He says he finally experienced true love around age 70 through his wife and children.
Sylvester Stallone is opening up about the abuse and emotional neglect that marked his childhood, revealing experiences that remained painful decades later. The former Rocky star, now 80, discusses those memories while promoting his new book, The Steps: A Memoir.
The book hits stores on Tuesday, September 29. During an interview with The New York Times, Stallone explained that he deliberately omitted some of his darkest experiences because he did not want readers to feel sorry for him.
“I didn’t put a lot of stuff in the book because I didn’t want a pity party, but it was insane,” he confessed of his childhood. His account describes a home life with physical violence, little affection and parents whom he did not consider nurturing.
Stallone was only 11 years old when his parents divorced. After their separation, he spent time living in Maryland with his father, whom Stallone remembers as an extremely volatile man who physically abused him.
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“The next thing you know — wham! He had very big hands,” Stallone recalled. “You just learned to duck a little bit.”
Sylvester Stallone is opening up about the difficult childhood that shaped him long before Hollywood fame. The 80-year-old actor says he endured physical abuse from his father, struggled to feel accepted and experienced little affection at home. Stallone is sharing more about… pic.twitter.com/8rfoe6JsRp
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One incident has remained particularly vivid. Before church, Stallone’s father sent him to a store to buy bread, but Stallone encountered friends and returned with nut bread instead.
“And he kicked me in the stomach and hit me and like laid me out, got in the car , and went to church,” Stallone recounted. Still a child, Stallone was left lying in the street after the attack.
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“Really, it’s unbelievable,” he lamented. “It’s unbelievable.”
Years later, Stallone confronted his father about the abuse. By then, Stallone was in his 40s and had become a well established Hollywood star, but the memories of his father’s violence had not disappeared.
Stallone told him, “I wish you and I could be the same age for three minutes.” When his father asked why, Stallone answered, “Because I’d like to give you some of your own medicine . And you would know what it’d be like to have your a– kicked.”
Sylvester Stallone opens up about how MESSED UP his relationship with his abusive father was, from being jealous of his success to even killing a CAT in front of him just to prove he was TOUGHER 😲
Stallone says he never got a single HUG from either parent and still remembers… pic.twitter.com/8O2hnKAAjq
— Killa 🌺 (@KillaKreww) September 27, 2026
Rather than backing down, his father immediately challenged him to fight. “He was ready to go at 68 years-old,” Stallone said of his father.
Stallone later connected that same ferocity to one of his most famous movie roles. “So, when people go, ‘Where do you get the ferocity to play Rambo ?’ Genetic,” he explained.
The pain in Stallone’s childhood was not limited to his relationship with his father. He said his mother also showed him virtually no physical affection while he was growing up.
“My mother never — and my brother will attest — hugged me. Ever, ever,” he lamented. The absence of affection left Stallone feeling that he had not experienced acceptance or nurturing at home.
His parents also sent him to live in a boarding house when he was a young boy. “I just was raised by strangers, you know, in a boarding house,” he said.
Stallone eventually came to view that unfamiliar setting as preferable to his family home. “And it became sort of a natural environment . And my parents were really never nurturing, so this was actually a bonus compared to where I was living.”
Sylvester Stallone with his three daughters pic.twitter.com/MZcv9aTP4A
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When asked whether the experience made him tough, Stallone acknowledged that it did, but not necessarily in a healthy way. “In the wrong way, yeah, it did. It made me very tough.”
That toughness carried a painful emotional cost. Stallone said he did not experience “real, real, real, real true love” until he was around 70, when he finally found it with his wife and children.
“And that’s a big pity. It really is,” Stallone said. Despite that sorrow, he went on to become one of Hollywood’s most iconic stars and the father of five children.
Stallone shared two sons, Sage and Seargeoh, with his first wife, Sasha Czack. They were married from 1974 until their divorce in 1985.
Later in 1985, Stallone married his Rocky IV costar Brigitte Nielsen, whom he divorced in 1997. He has been married to Jennifer Flavin since 1997, and they are the parents of three daughters, Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet.
His revelations trace the distance between a childhood defined by fear and neglect and the family life he found decades later. The Steps: A Memoir arrives in stores on Tuesday, September 29.
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