Sylvester Stallone talks about his career as an ’80s action star: ‘I think of myself as the last of the dinosaurs’

Sylvester Stallone he had a truly incredible career, which began with a little film called Rocky. Then he became one of the biggest and baddest action stars of the ’80s and ’90s, and after all this time, he’s still making big film and TV projects.

During a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight Canada during the world premiere of his biographical documentary, Cunning, Stallone talked about the longevity of his career and called himself “the last of the dinosaurs,” referring to the fact that he is one of the few ’80s action stars who is still leading big projects. He said:

“You can’t be prepared for this… the longevity of this career is mind-blowing. It’s just mind-blowing because I don’t know how much longer you can wait. Society is changing, commercialization in cinema is faster. So longevity would become a premium.

“I consider myself the last of the dinosaurs, you know what I mean? And I’m very proud of it. But yes, you have to really think about it. It’s incredible. In short, almost 50 years have passed… So I don’t take it for granted, but I really want to spend them with the people I love. Most of what’s left.”

Stallone is 77 and stars in the next action movie Expend4bles and he also got it King of Tulsa Season 2 coming soon. With his big deal with Amazon, he has plenty of other projects in mind.

Speaking previously about the ’80s action movie era, Stallone said in the Netflix documentary Arnoldo: “The 80s were a very interesting time because the definitive ‘action guy’ hadn’t yet formed. Up until that point the action was like a car chase Bullit OR The French Connection. A film focused on intellect, on insinuations, on verbal this and verbal that.”

Stallone continued, “You actually relied on your body to tell the story. Dialogue was not necessary. I saw that there was an opportunity, because no one else was doing it except another Austrian guy, who didn’t need to say much… He was superior. He simply had all the answers. He had the body. He had the strength. This was his character.

These guys truly changed action movies forever, but nothing we see made these days captures the awesome magic of those classic ’80s action movies. That era was a fun time for action movies!