‘I wasn’t Italian enough for them’: Sylvester Stallone was not allowed to star in one of the greatest films of all time

Before starring in Rocky in 1976, Sylvester Stallone was just an aspiring actor looking to make a name for himself in Hollywood. After completing his comedy studies in 1968, he began appearing on stage with Mike Stallone and then Sylvester E. Stallone since 1970.

Crying about poverty in New York, he was close to giving up his career, but in 1971 he tried to get a job on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. But she didn’t get that little look for the reason she got a little bit in her throat, as she confided last year Fox News :

For some reason gangsters have this aura and I was amazed every time. I remember auditioning for The Godfather to appear among 250 people in a wedding scene. They told me that I didn’t know enough Italian for them.

A heavy blow for the actor, who was born to an Italian immigrant father and an American mother of Ukrainian Jewish descent. Stallone could appear lost in the crowd in this sequence:

After ditching this simple look, he got one of the main roles in the revolutionary hippie genre film No Place to Hide. Released in complete anonymity, the feature film will get a second life on VHS and DVD under the title Rebel, carried by a misleading poster shamelessly taken from high security. To learn more about this story, see our article dedicated to the film.

Small roles followed for Stallone until he wrote Rock and managed to escape poverty. Ironically enough, when it comes to auditioning for The Godfather, he became famous for playing “The Italian Horseman”.

Even a superstar actor will not forget these tender years which are a part of his career and on which he willingly expresses himself throughout his career.