“It Got to the Point Where I Became Bulimic.” Stallone, 80, Says the Rocky III Body Ran on Tuna, 30 Cups of Coffee a Day, and Steroids — the First Time He’s Said the Eating Disorder Out Loud
· Thought Catalog
Updated 54 minutes ago, September 30, 2026
“Guys… you really think these guys are natural?”
Sylvester Stallone put that question to a packed room at New York’s 92nd Street Y this week, sitting across from CBS’s Tracy Smith. The crowd had just gasped at his Rocky III prep.
He compared a superhero physique to a piece of costume. You wear it for 6 to 8 weeks, then you shed it.
The bulimia admission came days earlier, in a New York Times Magazine interview with Lulu García-Navarro. “You heard it here first,” he told her.
By his own count, he got down to 2.6% body fat for Rocky III and “couldn’t hold anything down.” He says the body started as armor and slowly became an obsession.
On steroids, he didn’t hedge: “Oh, my god, you have to.” And on the rest of Hollywood: “Nobody does it without additives and drugs, period. I don’t care what they say.”
The transformation was a character choice. In 1976, Rocky was a broke club fighter from Philadelphia. By 1982, Stallone wanted him vain, polished and untouched, so the beating from Clubber Lang (Mr. T) would land like a wake-up call.
His own wake-up call came decades later. His wife, Jennifer Flavin, told him she didn’t like how he looked. He said he was just getting old. She pushed him to get checked anyway, and he ended up with a heart valve replacement. He says that exam “absolutely” saved his life.
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The rest of the tally: 9 back surgeries, 2 shoulder surgeries and 3 neck fusions. “Everything is held together with baling wire,” he says.
He calls what he put himself through “masochistic.” The relief finally came in 1997’s Cop Land, playing a partially deaf, overweight cop who was the weakest man in every room.
If he could do it over, he’d let someone else carry the banner.
His memoir, The Steps, is out today, and it’s the rags-to-Rocky half of his life: New York in 1969 to Best Picture in 1977.
It covers the forceps birth that left his mouth crooked, cleaning lion cages at the Central Park Zoo, and selling his dog when he was broke with a baby on the way. It ends with him refusing to sell his Rocky script unless he got to play the lead.
That same stretch is the plot of I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly’s film with Anthony Ippolito as young Stallone hitting theaters Nov. 6, about 2 weeks before the original Rocky turns 50. Stallone gave the thumbs up and cried watching it at home.
The body he built after that is the story he’s telling on this press tour.
If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Alliance for Eating Disorders at 866-662-1235.
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