Stallone: I Became Bulimic on Rocky III, Body Fat at 2.6%

By Tom Whitfield

Sylvester Stallone said he reached 2.6 percent body fat while preparing for "Rocky III" and became bulimic in the process, calling the bodybuilding that shaped his most iconic role "an obsessive body-worship kind of thing."

The actor made the admission in a New York Times interview tied to his forthcoming memoir "The Steps," scheduled for release on Sept. 29. The book revisits his career, including the physical transformations that defined his most famous roles.

Stallone framed his physique as deliberate character design. "I looked at Rocky: very smooth, very normal-looking guy," he told the paper. "And then I said, I think the character would start to become a bit more vain. And then in 'Rambo,' you're playing a warrior, so you'd be a bit more animalistic. You wouldn't be so smooth."

That led to a brief. "So I started to think: Design your body like a jaguar, a cat. Not big like Arnold, but more feral and aggressive and very limber and athletic."

The body, he said, functioned as armor. "It was my armor."

What did Stallone say about bulimia?

The Times interview carried his most explicit accounting yet. Stallone named the disorder directly. "It got to the point where I became bulimic."

He added the specifics. "I got down to 2.6 percent body fat when I was doing 'Rocky III,' and I couldn't hold anything down. Or I didn't want to keep it down because I became so obsessed with staying at that point of fitness, literally an obsessive body-worship kind of thing."

The interview did not specify how long Stallone held the 2.6 percent figure, nor did he name a physician who measured it. The Times did not present independent verification.

What role did steroids play?

Stallone acknowledged performance-enhancing drugs as part of his regimen. "Nobody does it without additives and drugs, period," he said. "I don't care what they say. It isn't as though you're a junkie, but if you're going to work out and try to stay in shape for six months straight, and you're eating yogurt and pudding, it's not happening."

He described a cycling pattern. "I used them in a sensitive way — six weeks on, six weeks off."

The actor did not name the substances he took, nor did he name a prescribing doctor. He conceded the cost in a single line: "People go, 'Oh, you don't get that way naturally.' No, you don't. But that also took a terrible toll."

When did he feel liberated?

Stallone singled out one film as the pivot. "It wasn't until I did 'Cop Land,' when I had to play the weakest guy in the room — partially deaf, overweight — that I felt somewhat liberated," he said. "But yeah, I've abused my body."

He closed the conversation with a conditional. "If I could do it over again, I would say, 'Let someone else carry the banner and don't do your own stunts.'"

Stallone said he no longer views his body as armor, but the "masochistic" treatment came, in his words, "at a terrible price."

What does the memoir add?

"The Steps" arrives Sept. 29. The Times interview functions as the book's most detailed preview to date, and the bulimia admission is the central new disclosure.

The conversation also reopens a question Stallone has fielded since the 1980s: how much of his action-era physique was attainable without pharmaceutical help. Stallone's answer — that it was not — leaves readers to weigh the cost he now names against the franchise that produced it.