“We hated each other a lot”: Sylvester Stallone recounts his relationship with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 80s

In an interview with 

Forbes magazine, Sylvester Stallone looks back on his very complicated relationship with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 80s.

In the mid-1980s, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were the two biggest stars of American action cinema. But they don’t really like each other. Worse, the competition between them is fierce, each observing the other’s successes very carefully. Their films come out a few months apart. In 1982, Sylvester Stallone starred in Rambo , while Arnold Schwarzenegger had just been a hit in Conan the Barbarian . The latter released Predator in 1987, only a year after Rocky ‘s interpreter unveiled Cobra to the public. 

In an interview for the American magazine Forbes , Sylvester Stallone returned to the tumultuous relationship between the two actors in the mid-1980s. The 76-year-old comedian recounts the facts with some hindsight. “We really hated each other a lot. It might sound a bit vain, but I think we were kind of pioneering a genre at the time and it hasn’t really been seen since. So [there was] competition, because that’s his nature, he’s very competitive and so am I… And I thought that helped, but off screen we were always competitive and it wasn’t good. a whole healthy thing”.

Today very good friends, the two Hollywood icons have shared the poster on several occasions, in the Expendables franchise in 2012 or in Evasion a year later. While Arnold Schwarzenegger has been more discreet in recent years in the cinema, Sylvester Stallone is more than ever on the front of the stage, in particular thanks to the series Tulsa King which has just started in the United States. The actor has not always known only triumphs in his career, but success is also judged on longevity.