Sylvester Stallone Admits That Arnold Schwarzenegger Was the Superior Action Star

I’ve been watching that new Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary on Netflix, Arnold, over the past few days. and I’m loving it! It offers a ton of fascinating insight into Schwarzenegger’s life and career. The second episode of the doc put focus on Schwarzenegger’s movie career, and Sylvester Stallone was interviewed for that segment. He talked about their rivalry and what it was like for them as they fought to be the greatest action star at the time.

Stallone admitted in the interview that they hated each other in the ’80s, and they couldn’t even stand to be in the same room together. The competition was super fierce, and at one point Schwarzenegger once tricked Stallone into appearing in a critically panned movie.

Stallone also admitted that Schwarzenegger was the superior star and explained: “You actually relied upon your body to tell the story, dialogue was not necessary. I saw that there was an opportunity because no one else was doing this except some other guy from Austria, who doesn’t need to say much… He was superior. He just had all the answers. He had the body. He had the strength. That was his character.”

Stallone went on to talk about the differences in their action hero personas: “I had to get my ass kicked constantly, whereas Arnold, he never got hurt much, and I’m going, ‘Arnold, you could go out and fight a dragon, and you’d come back with a Band-Aid.’”

Schwarzenegger went on to praise Stallone for his work: “Every time he came out with a movie like Rambo II, I had to figure out a way of now outdoing that. Without Stallone, I maybe wouldn’t have been as motivated in the ’80s to do the kind of movies that I did and to work as hard as I did. I’m a competitive person.”

As the years passed and the two actors got older, they were able to set their hatred for each other aside and become friends. They would go on to appear in films together such as Escape Plan and three of the Expendables movies. They are even carving pumpkins together.

The two actors were so much fun to watch in the movies they made back in the day and they both had their strengths and weaknesses. But, in the ‘90s, I definitely preferred Arnold’s movies over Stallone’s. Which action star did you like more?