{"id":266523,"date":"2026-10-02T19:01:39","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T19:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/02\/sylvester-stallone-on-his-life-before-rocky-from-cleaning-lion-cages-to-his-gangster-wedding\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T19:01:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T19:01:39","slug":"sylvester-stallone-on-his-life-before-rocky-from-cleaning-lion-cages-to-his-gangster-wedding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/02\/sylvester-stallone-on-his-life-before-rocky-from-cleaning-lion-cages-to-his-gangster-wedding\/","title":{"rendered":"Sylvester Stallone on His Life Before Rocky: From Cleaning Lion Cages to His Gangster Wedding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"has-dropcap body dropcap\">Before becoming Rocky Balboa, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/topic\/sylvester-stallone\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Sylvester Stallone<\/strong><\/a> cleaned lion cages at the Central Park Zoo, got married wearing a gangster costume, and brought his father to the set of <em>Rocky<\/em>. And when <em>Rocky<\/em> finally made it to the Oscars, his mother decided not to accompany him to the ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>The actor recounts this in <em>The Steps,<\/em> his memoir in which he looks back on the years that led him to become one of the most recognizable stars in American cinema\u2014a journey marked by rejection, odd jobs, financial struggles, and complicated family relationships. Stallone recounts the years leading up to the film\u2019s success, right up to the night of the 1977 Oscars, when <em>Rocky<\/em> won the award for best picture.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"paywall\">Lion Cages at the Central Park Zoo<\/h2>\n<p class=\"paywall\">When he returned to New York in 1969 after spending a few years in Europe, Stallone wanted to be an actor and screenwriter. But first, he had to pay his rent. After a day spent fruitlessly looking for work, he walked past the Central Park Zoo and asked if they needed staff. \u201cFifteen minutes later, I was in a lion cage with a hose, a scoop, and a shovel,\u201d he recalls in his memoir. The star recounts working from 5:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for about three and a half weeks, cleaning the cages every day. \u201cIf you\u2019ve never been in a lion\u2019s cage after it\u2019s evacuated, let me tell you: It is very pungent. In no time, my eyes began to water from the stench of the natural ammonia in a lion\u2019s urine,\u201d he writes. Eventually, he decided to quit the job because that smell prevented him from going to talent agencies to look for acting work. \u201cI liked animals, but I didn\u2019t like reeking as if I had the world\u2019s greatest bladder problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/story\/sylvester-stallone-rocky-memoir\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before becoming Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone cleaned lion cages at the Central Park Zoo, got married wearing a gangster costume, and brought his father to the set of Rocky. And when Rocky finally made it to the Oscars, his mother decided not to accompany him to the ceremony. The actor recounts this in The Steps, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":266524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16968,9797,5278,2129],"class_list":{"0":"post-266523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrity","8":"tag-celebrity-memoirs","9":"tag-memoirs","10":"tag-rocky","11":"tag-sylvester-stallone"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}