1. Sylvester Stallone in Rambo III
A large number of by Sylvester Stallone Hollywood wholesalers might be on this list, but his work for Rambo III is a cut above the rest. Stallone is at his physical peak in this enthusiastic patriotic adventure that takes Rambo to Afghanistan. Stallone trained up to six days a week, three to four hours a day, to get back into the shape he wanted, depending on his 1988 TV interview with Oprah Winfrey. Then, to maintain his physique, he did three days of work, one day off, working about an hour at each session.
Another reason Stallone was so mad in this movie? This is because of his professional rivalry with Arnold Schwarzenegger. As Schwarzenegger recounted in a interview at Beyond Fest in 2017, the two stars were constantly trying to outdo each other in their movies: “I’m so glad we sorted out our mess because it wasn’t pretty,” Schwarzenegger said. “We attacked each other relentlessly in the press. We insulted each other and called out our weak points, and it was so competitive. It got so silly that all of a sudden it became a competition to see who has the most muscular body. So I said, ‘Sly, forget it now. Because there’s only one sevenfold Mr. Olympia, and that’s me! But then he had to use bigger weapons. So it was a competition to see who had the biggest gun and then who used the biggest knife. Do you remember the Rambo knife getting so big it looked like a sword? Nobody has a knife like that! But Stallone had built one, so I had to come up with a bigger one. That’s how it happened. ‘Who has the most unique kills? Who kills the most people on screen? Who makes the most money at the box office? Who has the least body fat when they go into production? All this shit started happening, and it didn’t stop. It was amazing.
(Want to get caught like Stallone? Try Stallone’s full arm routine and that training on how to get forearms like Rambo.)
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