Years before modern entertainment rivalries like Dwayne Johnson vs. Vin Diesel or Taylor Swift vs. Kanye and Kim Kardashian, action juggernauts Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger comprised the biggest battle of Hollywood heavyweights. Their “out of control” feud, which fueled increasing cinematic body counts in the 1980s and ‘90s, dissipated years ago as they became good friends. But the actors reflected on their years of tension for the first time in a new TV special in which the Terminator franchise vet spoke candidly about the pettiness of his youth, and why he never stopped watching Stallone’s biggest hits.
Stallone and Schwarzenegger shared the screen for TMZ Presents: Arnold & Sly: Rivals, Friends, Icons, where host Harry Levin got the duo to speak pretty freely about their pasts and crossing career paths. It was more or less agreed that the seeds of their feud were planted during the night of the 34th annual Golden Globes in 1977, where Schwazenegger won New Star of the Year early on for Stay Hungry. Later, when Rocky was announced as Best Drama winner, an admittedly jealous Stallone celebrated by throwing handfuls of flowers up into the air during which Stallone celebrated Rocky’s Best Drama win by taking the flowers from the table display and throwing them into the air in Schwarzenegger’s direction.
Though the Total Recall star didn’t have any outward reactions to share on the night of the ceremony, he said that inspired him to keep Sly Stallone in his crosshairs going forward as his star power grew. According to Schwarzenegger:
It just developed from then on. Now I had to chase him. Then he did Rocky II, and then he did Rocky III, and then he did all these movies, and it just kept going up and up. And I made…my salary was kind of like 10% of his. When he’d get now $2 million, I got $200,000. He made $5 million, I made $500,000. So I had to chase behind him. I said, ‘This has to stop.’ And every time, I read, ‘Sly just got a new record number: $10 million.’ No actor ever got ten million, not even Marlon Brando got $10 million. And I said to myself, ‘Son of a bitch.’
For what it's worth, Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn't have picked a better up-and-coming talent to aim for, considering Stallone's run from Rocky through the early 1990s is filled with far more blockbuster box office successes than failures. (The Twins co-star definitely talked about his epic Stop or My Mom Will Shoot! sabotage scheme as well, speaking of failures.)
But despite his inherently competitive nature, Arnold Schwarzenegger said he never actively avoided watching Sly Stallone's biggest franchise releases. As he put it:
So I didn’t boycott his movies or anything like this. I loved when he did Rambo, I loved when he did Rocky, I loved all this stuff. So I had to kind of catch up to that, right? This gave me kind of a motivation, and this is what the whole thing was about. It became very, very competitive.
The Predator actor spoke to the idea that he demanded to be shown with bigger guns in that movie and others so that he could look that much more badass than John Rambo, with Stallone also upping the ante for each successive action movie that he starred in. That said, the latter has admitted in recent years that Schwarzenegger was the "superior" action star in comparison, pointing to the idea that the Austrian actor's reign was such that his characters rarely got beat down or suffered injuries, while Stallone's characters were constantly getting whupped up on.
In retrospect, Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed with Harry Levin in thinking that Stallone was as instrumental to his career as anything else, even if the motivations came from a combative place. As he put it:
There’s no two ways about that. He was very helpful in my career because I had something that I could chase, and that I could kind of like [say], ‘Oh, I have to be able to do this kind of work.’
The actors made a certain kind of history in 2013 when they co-starred in the action romp Escape Plan, though it wasn't the instant classic that action movie fans were hoping for. Schwarzenegger bowed out of co-starring in the sequels, and while they were also both a part of Expendables 3, I know I'm not the only person who wishes they could work on something epic and timeless together before their respective retirements.
We can only hope that TMZ figures out ways to bring more of these high-profile interviews to Fox in the future. Anyone who missed the special can check it out with a Hulu subscription the day after airing. Head to our 2024 TV premiere schedule to see what else is hitting the small screen soon.
