Life according to: Rocky legend and Hollywood superstar, Sylvester Stallone

The superstar actor on Rocky, redemption and real-life jobs.

What is your new film, Samaritan, about?

It’s a take on when you’re born with supernatural gifts but things aren’t turning out as well as you thought. My character has had enough of saving society because he can’t save himself, so he goes into hiding for 25 years and become a trashman.

Then this kid comes along and he realises something isn’t ringing true about this old man, until finally I’m exposed and I go back and do my superhero stuff.

You had a number of jobs before becoming an actor. Did that help you in playing a binman?

There’s something about on-the-ground experience and I’ve been everything from a doorman to a bar tender to cutting fish heads to working in lions’ cages to being a movie usher. I know how the whole experience works.

You need to be humble to get through it, but you learn and it adds to the human experience. I enjoy acting now more than when I was 30 or 35, when you think you know everything but you know nothing. I don’t think the soft spot in a man’s head gets hard until about 41. You’re still learning – you think you’ve got it under control, but not quite.

What was it like acting opposite teenager Javon Walton?

As you get older you become cynical but then you look at youth and there is something so invigorating and infectious about this kid. He wants you to educate him and he was winding the clock back for me.

That’s where it’s important when you see older people hanging out with younger people. They become so symbiotic. They grab your wisdom and you grab their energy, it’s very important. The kid is necessary because there’s no valid reason for why my character is so exiled from life.

Every character is necessary to support the other. Rocky would never have been Rocky without Adrian or Paulie, they’re the building blocks, otherwise Rocky would just have been a bum and he knew he was.

What makes you keep pushing yourself as an action star?

I don’t know but I wish I would get over it! When I started, there were no real action films. I thought it was a genre that was really fascinating. You can turn the sound off and know what the story is, just through physical movement. It’s modern mythology.

Every society needs these figures, it’s almost like they are modern-day god-like stories, we’ve seen it from The Iliad and The Odyssey to present-day Marvel, there’s no difference.

One is presented through CGI and the other through the written word. I’m fascinated at telling stories that can be understood by different cultures because we’re hitting on the same emotions that everyone shares – fear, loneliness, heroism, father-like figures, and youth must be served.

Whenever I see an opening, I stick it in there. People say it’s corny and saccharine. Well, call me a honey bear because I’m completely saccharine.

One of the themes of the film is the possibility of having a second chance – what second chances were important in your life?

Redemption is everything. Unfortunately, we only learn through stupid mistakes. We spend the second half of our lives trying to make up for stupid decisions. Almost everything I write is dripping in redemption.

Everyone says if I knew then what I know now, and I try to capitalise on that whenever I can, of this unrequited this or unachievable that. It’s a hunger. It’s like loneliness; everyone in the world’s biggest fear is being alone, living alone and maybe even dying alone.

There is no worse horror than that premise. That was what the sixth Rocky was about, and no one wanted to make it; they said it was stupid. I said no, for people who are actually facing that, which is the majority of the earth, it’s identifiable, it’s grief.

I don’t want to get morbid but you try to hit subjects that are relatable, otherwise if your hero doesn’t give a damn then people won’t give a damn about him. You need some relatability and that means they are vulnerable and fragile at times.

Samaritan is available to watch now on Prime Video