Sylvester Stallone's new autobiography, The Steps, released today, recounts how a fortune teller's predictions in 1969 proved uncannily accurate, shaping his belief in fate. The 80-year-old actor, famed for Rocky, First Blood, and Rambo, details his life up to winning the Best Picture Oscar for Rocky in 1977.
Fortune Teller's Predictions
In 1969, while backpacking through the Spanish Pyrenees, Stallone, then 23, paid 100 pesetas to a clairvoyant named Madame Pilar. She predicted “fortune by 1976, drama, not singing, avoid comedy,” and mentioned a double lifeline, indicating he would live two different kinds of lives.
Stallone writes: “I had just turned 23. On a dirt road leading to the sea, deep in the Pyrenees mountains, I saw a sign. It was for a fortune teller. A hundred pesetas and I could have my future foretold.”
Struggles in New York
After dropping out of the University of Miami, Stallone moved to New York in 1969 with just $80 (£60), sleeping in a bus terminal and working odd jobs like shovelling lion dung at Central Park Zoo and slicing salmon at a deli. He recalls, “After a couple of months, I could slice salmon and sturgeon so thin you could almost read through it.”
He describes his lonely existence, sleeping in clothes and a sheepskin coat due to unreliable heating, and spending Thanksgiving and Christmas alone with a chicken breast and apple juice, with only pigeons for company.
Acting Beginnings and Breakthrough
Working at the Baronet and Coronet Theater, Stallone practiced his acting by making announcements before screenings, despite facing mockery. He also encountered a dangerous customer with a butcher's knife, whom he let in without a ticket.
In 1974, he landed a breakthrough role in Death Race 2000 but refused to film a nude scene, eventually doing it in a towel. He married Sasha Czack, borrowing a 1920s gangster suit for the wedding, while she made her dress from a linen curtain.
Rocky's Success and Legacy
In 1975, Stallone wrote the screenplay for Rocky in three and a half days, hoping to gain respect from his parents. The film became the highest-grossing of 1976, earning over $225 million (£168 million) globally on a $1 million budget, and won three Oscars, including Best Picture.
Stallone reflects on the moment Jack Nicholson announced Rocky as the winner: “Now, with five little words out of Jack’s mouth - ‘and the winner is Rock,’ - he didn’t just save my life, he changed all the cast’s lives forever.”
The Steps by Sylvester Stallone is available now in Hardback, eBook, and Audiobook (Seven Dials, £25.00).
