I’m a patriot of the heart.
A lot of guys don’t want to admit that they have a propensity for generosity and for violence.
I tend to think of action movies as exuberant morality plays in which good triumphs over evil.
I think audiences have hit the wall with CGI and special effects. They have seen so many over-the-top events that they can’t suspend disbelief.
And if I look at my icebox, there’s no way I’m sitting there looking like Gandhi. I mean, I don’t have crickets in there and little green rice. No, I mean it’s a pretty liberal icebox. It’s all in there.
I have all kinds of chest injuries; I tore my vein during ‘Rocky II’ and had 60 stitches. If you’ve seen ‘Rocky Balboa,’ you’ll know how bad they look.
Every morning, I crawl out of bed. I sit there and think, ‘Do I really need this?’ And I drag myself to the gym in my garage. It’s not fun. I hate it. I work out alone. Weights.
Crunches are much more effective than regular sit-ups because they specifically target your upper abdominal muscles rather than your hip muscles. If you’re not used to them, they can cause soreness a day or two later, but it’s a ‘cool’ soreness. A badge of honor.
A lot of women read male magazines. Of course, a lot of guys read female magazines, but they’ve got another issue to deal with. But a lot of women read men’s magazines and think, ‘Oh, this is what these guys are thinking? Studying up on the enemy here.’
I was an insecure kid. Once I saw ‘Hercules’ with Steve Reeves, it completely changed my life. If I had never gone to that film, I wouldn’t be here today.
I was an ambitious child and I tended to be scatterbrained. If I was at school and saw a bird outside the window I wanted to follow it. I was adventurous.
A lot of actors, and artists in general, never feel secure in love. They always feel everything’s going to be taken away from them, professionally and personally; they’re extremely emotional and volatile.
I think kids growing up, if they were picked on and feeling inferior at 12, they’re going to feel that way at 72. You just deal with it better. I’m serious.
I try to combine in my paintings cinematic feeling, emotional feeling, and sometimes actually writing on the page to combine all the different elements of communication.
Polo is like tennis – you literally have to live it.
On the sequel, you’ve lost the element of surprise. Usually, on the first one you may not go very, very deep into character; the second one you start to explore the character a bit more.
Nothing’s harder than writing. There’s no comparison. With directing, you can bounce a lot of ideas around. There’s tremendous support – you’ve got editors and sound mixers. With writing, it’s all you, and it’s just crippling when people tear up your pages.
My life has always been chaotic. From the time I got dressed in the back of a deflated, flat-tired, fish-smelling station wagon for Rocky. It’s always been do it yourself, kind of like paper-clip it together.
It took me a long time to be convinced that marriage was right for me because I’ve come from a long line of broken marriages. My parents divorced, and I had two broken marriages myself.
I watch a lot of news, and I watch musical shows because I think the music of the young people is really their news reports. They let you know how their country is going through their eyes, and about their experiences in the everyday shock of growing up.