Arrival in New York and Early Hardships
When Sylvester Stallone reached New York City in 1969, he carried just $60, and $43.60 of that was already committed to rent. In his newly released memoir, The Steps, the 80-year-old recounts the hardship and rejection he endured while pursuing an acting career. He had departed the American College in Switzerland without a diploma and quit the University of Miami only a few credits shy of a drama degree. The room he rented was so cramped that he later compared it to the smallest cell size advised for a federal prison, and eleven people shared a single bathroom.[S1]
To save money on laundry, Stallone showered with his clothes on. He said he could never afford a laundromat, and his wife finds the habit disgusting. He would lather his shirt, pants, underwear, socks, and himself with a bar of soap, provided it did not have a strange hair stuck to it. For food, he ate spoonfuls of cottage cheese and downed three or four raw eggs, storing them on his windowsill from around October until March because the summer heat would spoil them. He admitted he is surprised he never got salmonella, and he wrote in the book that he would not recommend the diet to anyone, though it sufficed when he was young and poor.[S1]
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Odd Jobs and a Brush with the Law
Stallone took a job as a movie theater usher at $34 per week, which he described as a filmmaking education gained by watching the screen night after night. One of his first positions involved cleaning lion enclosures at Central Park Zoo, where the animals stayed so near and watchful that he felt his life was at risk. He also worked the 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift at Dover Delicatessen after noticing a Help Wanted sign. There he mastered slicing fish paper-thin for lox on bagels, though he does not miss the irritable patrons or the wild drunks and gangsters arriving at 2 a.m. Following a dispute at the deli, he was put in handcuffs in a police car, still in his apron and name tag, and taken to The Tombs, which he described as a place of nightmares. He was held in a 20-foot-by-20-foot cell with at least 25 others.[S1]
During those years, Stallone was turned down by agents again and again, one of whom faulted his deep voice and uneven mouth, qualities that would later define his on-screen image. He credited a mixture of optimism and naïveté, reasoning that if he gave everything and sacrificed every pleasure, he would discover whether he could become the person he had always longed to be. He observed that for an actor, failing to break through by 30 means a 99% likelihood of never succeeding, but since he did not know that then, he simply continued. He added that by modern standards he stood at the edge of oblivion, yet he believed he was living reasonably well.[S1]
