Schwarzenegger spoke about the peculiarities of his relationship with Stallone: ​​“We went to the extreme”

Arnold Schwarzenegger admits he and Sylvester Stallone “tried to derail each other” during their heyday.

Actor-bodybuilder Schwarzenegger has admitted to a past feud with a fellow action star, CNN reports.

The septuagenarian former California governor stopped by “The Graham Norton Show” on Friday, where he admitted that he and Sylvester Stallone started out as major “movie rivals” before becoming “fantastic friends.”

“We were rivals in the movies, but we took the rivalry to the extreme,” the Terminator star explained on the show.

“Each of us had to have the best body, we had to kill more people in our films, and we had to have the biggest guns,” Schwarzenegger continued.

“It got out of control and we were trying to derail each other,” the Terminator actor added.

“Then when we both invested in Planet Hollywood, we started flying around the world together to promote it, and we became fantastic friends,” the ex-governor says.

Both Stallone and Schwarzenegger, CNN recalls, found fame and fortune in Hollywood in the 1970s: Schwarzenegger burst onto the scene in 1970 with Hercules in New York, and Stallone achieved success in 1976 with the Oscar-winning Rocky “

The rivalry between American actor Sylvester Stallone and Austrian-American actor Arnold Schwarzenegger lasted about twenty years.

The two actors first met each other in 1977 when they were seated at the same table at the 34th Golden Globe Awards, where Rocky, starring Stallone, was nominated for six but missed out. all but one, while Schwarzenegger was nominated for New Star of the Year for Stay Hungry and won.

Stallone later said in an interview with Variety that Schwarzenegger laughed at him when Rocky lost in several categories. Finally, when Rocky won the Best Motion Picture Drama category, Stallone threw a vase of flowers at Schwarzenegger.

In an interview with the News of the World in 1985, Schwarzenegger insulted Stallone (who was considered a much bigger star at the time) by claiming that he had used body doubles in several of his films.

In November 1985, Rocky IV, starring Stallone as Rocky’s rival, featured a robotic, muscular villain with a strange accent, Ivan Drago, who was seen as a parody of Schwarzenegger.

In February 1988, the News of the World published an article by journalist Wendy Lee under the headline: “The Nazi Secret of a Hollywood Star.” The article claims that Schwarzenegger is a secret Hitler admirer with “ardent Nazi and anti-Semitic views.” The article claims that his father, Gustav, was responsible for rounding up Jews to put them in concentration camps. It was alleged that the source of the publication was Stallone. Although Schwarzenegger’s father did voluntarily apply to join the Austrian Nazi Party on March 1, 1938, and was loyal to Nazi Germany during World War II, there is no evidence that Gustav rounded up Jews or was directly involved in war crimes. Gustav Schwarzenegger’s Nazi ties were exposed in 1990, two years after his indictment; however, Arnold, born two years after the fall of Hitler’s regime, always vehemently condemned them.

In September 1988, the New York Post reported that Stallone and his entourage entered a nightclub, saw a photograph of Schwarzenegger on the wall and demanded that it be removed or Stallone would leave. The owner gave the photo of Schwarzenegger to Stallone’s security guards, who destroyed it.

But over time, the settled stars reconciled. In addition to their partnership with Planet Hollywood, the pair of action heroes eventually starred in the same films, including 2013’s Escape Plan and the Expendables franchise.

This year, both Schwarzenegger and Stallone also became the subject of Netflix documentaries: “Arnold” was released in June, and “Sly” is scheduled to premiere next month, CNN notes.