Sylvester Stallone Confronts His Father’s Physical Abuse in Netflix Documentary: “I Was No Stranger to Serious Pain”

In his new Netflix documentary, SLY—which is coming to the streaming service tomorrow—Sylvester Stallone spends much of the movie’s runtime reckoning with a difficult truth: He was severely, physically abused by his father.

Directed by Thom Zimny (best known for his collaborations with Bruce Springsteen on concert films), SLY is a fairly typical, straightforward celebrity documentary. It opens with Stallone, now 77, recalling his childhood—including a disturbing anecdote in which Stallone relays, in a somewhat matter-of-fact manner, the time his father, Frank Stallone Sr., grabbed him by the throat and threw him off a horse. Stallone was 13 years old at the time, was playing polo, and was beginning to become nationally ranked.

“My father wasn’t liking that so much,” Stallone said in the film. Then he describes a game where his father criticized his horse-handling technique, screaming at him from the stands, and Stallone protested that he knew what he was doing. “He comes out of the stands, grabs me by the throat, throws me on the ground, takes the horse, and walks off the field,” Stallone recalled. “I laid there, and I went, ‘I never want to see a horse again in my whole life.'”

It’s the first of many times Stallone references his father’s abuse in the documentary. “I was raised by a very physical father,” he said later on. “So I was no stranger to serious pain. I think it just became, ‘I’m not going to break.’ No matter what he did, ‘I’m not going to break.'”

Later still, he said his father’s anger and physical abuse inspired Stallone’s performance as Rambo—a feral, rageful Vietnam War veteran—in the 1982 action movie First Blood. “My father was Rambo, in reality. Nothing was ever settled verbally. It was usually a physical ultimatum. The way he’d turn a fork… [Stallone mime spinning a fork.] If he’s eating like this, you know you’re gonna get it.”

Neither Stallone nor Director Zimny felt the need to address the elephant in the room, however, which is that Stallone himself has been accused of violence. He’s been accused of rape by multiple women—in 2001 when a dancer sued Stallone for rape; in a 1986 Las Vegas police report that resurfaced in 2016 about the sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl; and in 2017 when a woman claimed Stallone sexually assaulted her in her office. Stallone and his lawyers have denied all of those allegations.

The only veiled reference to any of this is an eerie moment early on: “I know I’ve got a certain kind of… ferocity from my father,” Stallone said in the film, after a long pause. “No question.”

If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic abuse, help is available. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.