Some years ago the rivalry between Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) and The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) was a long and prolonged one. Recently the two of them announced that they had sunk their differences but can a feud which has lasted for decades die down so quickly? Sections of the media which cover Hollywood news have brought up the problems between the two and articles have been written about their long lasting discord.
It was but natural that the two would come into conflict sooner or later because they both did similar roles on the silver screen. Both were all out action heroes who came out with all guns blazing against their opponents. It was inevitable that sooner or later they would train their verbal guns on each other as well.
When Arnold (who turned 76), entered Hollywood films one of his early films was a movie called The Villain. After watching the film a critic remarked “the horse in the film has a more expressive face than this bodybuilder.”
When Arnold went to meet the famous producer Dino De Laurentis, the latter saw his huge muscular body and heard his German accented English and sent him away immediately. Arnold’s agent who was sitting nervously outside the office was livid. “Arnold, look at my watch. He threw you out in one minute and forty seconds. Yours was the fastest exit in the history of Hollywood cinema.”
But Arnold worked hard, reduced his body to an acceptable size for the screen and made efforts to minimize his German accent and went on to star in many films.
Arnold and Stallone first met during the Golden Globes award ceremony of 1977. Stallone had been nominated for Best Actor and Schwarzenegger was nominated for New Star of the Year. Stallone later said that Schwarzenegger laughed at him when he lost. “From that moment even our DNA hated each other,” said Stallone.
When Stallone first began toying with the idea of Rambo films he took a look at the movies that were popular. “I saw that nobody was doing this kind of stuff. There was one hulk from Austria (Arnold) but he couldn’t act. So I knew that my films would be loved,” explained Stallone.
The media realised that they had some newsworthy material in this rivalry and tried to keep it going. Often the duo was asked whose muscles were bigger. The first time Arnold was offended and retorted :”I am a champion bodybuilder. I have proved myself. You ask this question to that fella who thinks he can outdo me,” said Arnold.
Many years later Stallone analyzed this phase of their acting careers and said: “We were great rivals like Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Movie fans tried to figure out whose films had more action and were more attractive. But we had different styles of acting and I think we projected different characters on the screen. I always acted as an underdog. I got beaten up. I had to fight hard for my screen victories. But Arnold could get into a fight with a dinosaur and thereafter the dinosaur would be hospitalised.”
“We were always comparing ourselves with each other. We used to think – how many did he kill? 15? Then I will kill 30. Who uses bigger knives? Who uses bigger guns? At parties we did not like to be seen near each other. It was like the room was not big enough to contain the two of us,” explained Stallone.
But now Arnold credits Stallone for a part of his success. “Without Stallone I would not have been as motivated to work as hard as I did. Because he was my rival, I put in a lot of hard work. I did whatever I could, to become Hollywood’s top action hero. He made me more competitive than I naturally was,” said Arnold in a documentary.
The rivalry cooled down when Arnold entered politics. He invited Stallone for several inaugurations during his time as the Governor of California. In response, Stallone had donated 15,000 dollars to Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign in 2005. The pair also starred in three movies together.
In 2013 the two of them met each other in the same hospital when they had to undergo similar surgeries in their shoulders. It was as if fate was having the last laugh, telling them that they were no longer supermen but mere humans and thereby drawing the curtains down on their long standing rivalry.
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