Stallone Counts the Cost of His Own Stunts: Nine Back Operations

Sylvester Stallone has had nine back operations and three neck fusions. Both shoulders have been ripped out. He regrets nearly all of it.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, the "Rocky" and "Rambo" star said he has "millions, millions of regrets" about a career spent doing his own stunts. He can itemize the damage at length.

"I could literally spend a half hour talking about injuries, the amount, not even like one, I'm talking about 30 hours, 30 minutes of just individual ones, because it becomes compounded," Stallone said. "I have been injured many, many times, but after 'Expendables,' I ended up with nine back operations, three neck fusions. Both shoulders ripped out, eye, you know, all kinds of lens put … it's been brutal."

He added that he has never been "quite the same" since the surgeries.

What happened on 'The Expendables'?

The breaking point came in 2010. Stallone starred in and directed the action thriller "The Expendables," opposite Jason Statham and Mickey Rourke. During one scene, WWE legend Steve Austin tackled him. The stunt went wrong.

The result: dislocated shoulders and a fractured neck. The injury required more than seven back surgeries, a metal plate in his neck and spinal fusions (a procedure joining vertebrae (the bones of the spine) together permanently).

Stallone's verdict on all this is refreshingly blunt. Asked whether he's proud of his stunt work, he told Fox News Digital: "No. I think I'm an idiot for doing that. I'm proud that I broke myself in pieces. Like, duh, no."

What's his advice to other actors?

"Let the pro do it." That's the moral Stallone draws from roughly five decades of physical filmmaking. He repeated the warning twice in a single breath, which suggests he means it.

"Don't be a stage hawk, or whatever you call it, a showboat. I know a lot of people are thinking about doing stunts … don't. Don't. Let the pro do it," Stallone said. "You cannot beat gravity; when you hit the ground, you lose, and it's going to come back."

He offered a comparison any sports fan understands. "Just ask every football player in the world," he said. Bodies, in his telling, keep the ledger and eventually send the bill.

Is this a new position for him?

No. Stallone has been saying versions of this since before the release of his memoir, "The Steps," last month. In an interview with The New York Times timed to that book, he described treating his body in "masochistic" ways, and said it came "at a terrible price."

"If I could do it over again, I would say, 'Let someone else carry the banner and don't do your own stunts,'" Stallone told the Times.

So the memoir and the interview form a single argument: the action hero of the 1980s now campaigns against his own methods. Whether a new generation of stars, weaned on practical stunt work and franchise contracts, listens is another matter entirely — a point Stallone himself seems to doubt every time he repeats the word "don't."