Anthony Ippolito Plays Sylvester in Peter Farrelly's 'I Play Rocky'

Anthony Ippolito opens Peter Farrelly's I Play Rocky on Nov. 6 in limited US release. Amazon MGM Studios expands the film nationwide on Nov. 20.

The European premiere bowed in a Zurich sports center. Rubber sneakers screamed against the floor. Ippolito had just stepped off a plane. He wore a thick cream pullover, a pressed collar, and brown slacks—an ensemble that stood in stark contrast to the sweaty, shirtless boxers pictured on the gym walls behind him.

What did the self-tape actually accomplish?

It ended the casting process. Ippolito read one news article about the project. He did not call his agent. He hung a punching bag in his grandmother's basement. He shot a self-tape with no script.

Farrelly, an Oscar winner for Green Book, watched the tape. The search was over.

The resemblance is the obvious commercial hook, since Ippolito shares Stallone's Italian heritage, jet-black hair, and soulful eyes, plus the actor's distinctive drawl caused by partial facial paralysis. That slurring stems from a severed facial nerve, damaged at birth by misused forceps.

Why bother playing Stallone at all?

Because the icon is also a man. Ippolito treats the drawl as character, not catchphrase.

"You start to see how idiosyncratic and how specific this man is," he notes. The remark doubles as a defense of his method.

Stallone wrote the original Rocky in the mid-1970s while dodging bills, then declined $300,000 from producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler—roughly $2 million today—to walk away from the script. The 1976 original beat Taxi Driver and All the President's Men for Best Picture and won three Oscars.

How did Ippolito build the man from scratch?

He gained 40 pounds of muscle. He studied every piece of footage available. He had eighteen months to work.

The most valuable resource proved to be Stallone himself, who sat for lengthy Zoom sessions even though he carries no official credit on the production. He opened up about his pre-fame years.

"Hearing that directly from him was really impactful," Ippolito says.

Costume designer Amy Roth watched hours of young Stallone footage. Production designer Anthony Gasparro rebuilt the 1976 sets room by room.

What does Ippolito want audiences to take away?

A connection, not a coronation. "Hopefully that gives more encouragement for people to go see the movie," he says. "That is the goal."

The Oscar talk started at the Toronto world premiere. Variety's Owen Gleiberman called the film "a cleverly crafted crowd-pleaser." He said Ippolito "gets it just right."

The actor stays courteous about the speculation. "There are so many foreign things to me unfolding so quickly," he says. "It's a lot to take in."

He previously played Al Pacino in Paramount+'s The Offer, about the making of The Godfather. That baptism by fire, he says, taught him the assignment.

"Conceptually at least, you immediately understand that the goal is to try to strip down the icon part of it, the celebrity part of it, and look at the man," Ippolito explains.

The job now is to prove the gamble paid off. "There was a time when this didn't seem so perfect," he says. "There were a lot of reasons to make it feel like it wasn't possible. To see that it was is really something."

I Play Rocky opens Nov. 6 in limited US release. It expands nationwide Nov. 20 via Amazon MGM Studios. Awards season waits in the wings, and so does the verdict on a gamble that began with one basement punching bag.