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Sylvester Stallone has opened up about his feud with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the new Netflix series “Arnold.”
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The ‘Rocky’ star said he’s come to accept that ‘The Terminator’ actor is a ‘superior’ action hero.
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He said that in the 1980s the two were so “antagonistic” that they couldn’t “bear to be in the same room”.
Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger have opened up about their past rivalry in a new documentary series about the latter’s life and career, with Stallone admitting Schwarzenegger was a “superior” action hero.
While the two Hollywood legends are now good friends and have even starred in ‘The Expendables’ and ‘Escape Plan’ together, things haven’t always been easy and throughout the last quarter of the 20th century they have been. major box office rivals. .
Speaking in ‘Arnold’, which is now streaming on Netflix, the two stars reminisced about their decades-long feud which began when Stallone admitted in the early 1980s that no one else was exploring the new genre of music. action emerge the same way it was “except another guy from Austria.”
Schwarzenegger acknowledged that Stallone had a head start with the first two “Rocky” movies under his belt before the actor-turned-politician’s first major film, “Conan the Barbarian,” was released in 1982.
“Sly was ahead of me in the ’80s, so it was up to me to catch up,” Schwarzenegger said. “Every time he released a movie like ‘Rambo II’, I now had to find a way to top that.”
Stallone said that with “Red Sonja”, “Commando” and his defining role in “The Terminator”, Schwarzenegger “started to get strong” and ended up surpassing him.
Stallone said that while he usually played the underdog who was “not too good” and “constantly got his ass kicked”, Schwarzenegger’s on-screen alter egos usually emerged victorious with barely a scratch.
“He just had all the answers. He had the body. He had the strength. It was his character,” he said. “Arnold, he was never too hurt, and I’m like, ‘Arnold, you could go out and fight a dragon and you’d come back with a band-aid.'”
“He wanted to be number one. Unfortunately, he got there,” Stallone conceded.
Stallone described their rivalry as akin to heavyweight boxing champions “Ali and Frazier”, and said they both felt like “there was only room for one of We”.
“We were competing on everything,” Schwarzenegger added. “The body being ripped and oiled up. Who’s the meanest. Who’s the toughest. Who uses bigger knives. Who uses bigger guns. Sly and I were at war.”
“We were incredibly antagonistic. We couldn’t even bear to be in the same room. People had to pull us apart,” Stallone recalled.
Stallone said the two had “different playing styles” and in retrospect he acknowledges that Schwarzenegger’s was “superior”.
Schwarzenegger, a graceful winner, said he credits his competition with Stallone with helping push him further and further in his career.
“If not for Stallone, maybe I wouldn’t have been as driven in the ’80s to make the kind of movies I did and work as hard as I did,” the actor said.
“Arnold” is now streaming on Netflix.
Read the original Insider article