Sylvester Stallone Discusses His Career as an '80s Action Star: "I Consider Myself Like the Last of the Dinosaurs"
Sylvester Stallone has had quite an incredible career, which all started with a little film called Rocky. He then went on to become one of the biggest and most badass action stars of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and after all this time, he’s still making great film and TV projects.
During a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight Canada while at the world premiere of his biographical documentary, Sly, Stallone talked about the longevity of his career and called himself “the last of the dinosaurs referring to the fact that he’s one of the few action stars from the ‘80s that is still headlining big projects. He said:
“You can’t be prepared for this…the longevity of this career is mind-blowing. It’s just mind-blowing because I don’t know how much longer you can wait. Society is changing, the commerciality in cinema, it’s faster. So longevity would become a premium.
“I consider myself like the last of the dinosaurs, you know what I mean? And I’m very proud of that. But yeah, you have to really think about that. It’s incredible. I mean it’s been almost 50 years… So I don’t take it for granted, but I really want to spend it with my loved ones. The majority of what’s left.”
Stallone is 77-years-old, and he stars in the upcoming action movie Expend4bles and he’s also got Tulsa King Season 2 coming. With his big deal at Amazon, he’s got a bunch of other projects cooking.
When previously talking about the era of the ‘80s action movies, Stallone said in the Netflix documentary Arnold: “The ’80s was a very interesting time because the definitive ‘action guy’ had not really been formed yet. Up until that time, action was a car chase like Bullitt or The French Connection. A film all about intellect and innuendo and verbal this and verbal that.”
Stallone went on to say: “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.”
These guys really did change action movies forever, but nothing we see being made these days captures the awesome magic of those classic ‘80s action movies. That era was a fun time for action movies!