Sylvester Stallone reveals what ended his 20-year feud with Arnold Schwarzenegger
Sylvester Stallone has opened up about being unable to 'get on the same stage' as Arnold Schwarzenegger and what he said to put the decades' long feud to rest.
Ah, two action movie stars, both alike in roles, but mortal enemies for two whole decades.
The infamous feud between Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger goes all the way back to the 1970s and it took a whopping 20 years for the actors to squash the drama.
The beef first began at the 1977 Golden Globes when Stallone won Best Actor for his role in Rocky, but perceived Schwarzenegger to be gloating.
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Stallone proceeded to grab a bowl of flowers and chuck it in Schwarzenegger's direction and just like that, the Wicked-style loathing began.
So bad was it, Stallone told the Rest is Entertainment podcast the pair 'couldn't get on the same stage together to make a presentation or a speech'.
However, after Schwarzenegger stepped away from Hollywood and ran for California governor instead, Stallone decided to say: "Enough of this. We're not in competition."
Stallone recalled: “He was not doing movies anymore. All right. Thank you very much for waking me up, lighting a fire under me. And he felt the same way.”
Although, there was once a time it wasn't just the same stage the pair weren't able to stand alongside each other.
In 2022, Stallone said the pair 'couldn't stand to be in the same galaxy', as one another.
He told Andy Cohen on his SiriusXM radio show: "We were kind of attacking each other and doing nasty things and saying nasty things about each other and all these stupid things."
Thankfully, after a rather long 20 years, the pair ended up uniting for a joint venture investing in the restaurant chain Planet Hollywood and had to fly around the world together to promote it – which quickly ended the feud.
The actors even went on to star alongside each other in four films for The Expendables too.
And it's a good thing the feud ended when it did, Stallone having previously reflected on it as being like 'life and death'.
He told The Sunday Times: "You see that when he was going against Tesla, there’s a ferocity there. A mortal enemy, I was the same with [Arnold] Schwarzenegger. We were at each other’s throats, big time. It wasn’t a joke. It was like life and death. We should have been together in the Roman Colosseum.
"It’s like when one fighter insults the other, he’s going to train so much to put a beating on the other. We needed each other, absolutely."
Indeed, Schwarzenegger reflected a similar sentiment during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show.
He voided: "We were movie rivals, but we took the competitiveness to the extreme — we each had to have the best body, we had to kill more people in our films, and we had to have the biggest guns. It got out of control, and we tried to derail each other."
And now? Well, the pair are 'fantastic friends', Schwarzenegger adding they're actually 'inseparable'.
All's well that ends well eh?
Topics: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hollywood
Poppy Bilderbeck
