As titans of Tinseltown in the 1980s and early 1990s, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger found each other ideal rivals and became so competitive that the Hollywood heroes resorted to Machiavellian tactics to achieve premier status. global action star, they revealed Tuesday in a TV interview with TMZ.
The septuagenarian stars, who are now close friends, sat down for a one-hour primetime special called TMZ Presents: Arnold & Sly: Rivals, Friends, Icons, which debuted on FOX Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET. With TMZ Founder Harvey Levin taking the interview honors, the two action movie legends discussed some revealing details of their past rivalry, discussed the troubled childhoods they say they overcame, and chose the faces they would place alongside their own on a hypothetical action hero Mount Rushmore.
“Well, what’s your body fat?,” Schwarzenegger recalled when discussing the multi-faceted rivalry. “I was down to 7 percent. So I said, “I was at 10% – it became a competition with the body.” Then he started using machine guns that looked like huge machine guns. I was running after him. He was running after me…so that’s how it happened. Then he killed 80 people [in Rambo] and I had to kill 87 people.
As their careers peaked in the early 1990s, this sort of one-upmanship between the two box office sensations became so intense that Schwarzenegger took steps to sabotage Stallone’s trajectory. More specifically, he said he ensured that Rocky The Oscar-winning actor was given the lead role in the film Stop! Or my mother will shoot, a mother-son buddy cop movie where Stallone starred opposite Daddy’s Girls“Estelle Getty. Thanks to the deception of the agents, the then future governor of California made it appear that it was he, and not Stallone, who should be given the lead role in the project, which had received the fire green but seemed to have, at best, questionable appeal For Schwarzenegger, losing the role to Stallone was a dream come true.
“Of course, I was absolutely in heaven. I felt like the only way I could catch him was if he tripped,” he revealed. “It was psychological. This is all about Hollywood. When you’re still as good as your last movie. So I felt pretty good, “if Sly tripped…”
Stallone’s 1992 attempt at a comedy crossover has since been called “completely stupid and completely unfunny,” according to Rotten Tomatoes, but it managed to gross $72 million worldwide. Still, it’s not as memorable as Schwarzenegger’s. Twins Or Kindergarten Cop.
While TMZ‘s special is filled with feelings of self-aggrandizement and throwbacks from the cast, with both former megastars managing to make solid points about their roles in Hollywood as the big screen heroes that defined the era and shattered box office records.
“We have arrived at a certain time,” Stallone says. “The films were in transition…
