Sylvester Stallone

Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone was born on July 6, 1946, in Hell's Kitchen, New York. He likes to go by Sly Stallone instead of his name Sylvester as he dislikes the name. He's an American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, film director and occasional painter of Italian descent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Stallone

Stallone's 2 best known roles are that of post-Vietnam vet John Rambo and 4th rate boxer Rocky Balboa. Stallone is best known for his hardcore action movies, his use of the stairs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where his character Rocky runs up in the 1st Rocky movie, have been renamed the Rocky Steps.

Early Life
He was the eldest son to Frank Stallone Sr, a hairdresser, and Jackie Stallone, an astrologer, former dancer and women's wrestling promoter. His younger brother is actor and musician Frank Stallone. Their father was born in Gioia Del Colle, in Apulia, Italy and emigrated to the US as a child. Their mother is half Russian Jewish and half French. Complications his mom had suffered in birth had resulted in doctors having to use 2 pairs of forceps during his birth; because of this, they had severed a nerve and caused paralysis in parts of his face. As a result of this, the lower left side of his face is paralyzed, including parts of his tongue, lip and chin, which give him a trademark he is now known for, slightly slurred speech, and a snarling look.

Early roles
Most of his early stuff was just cameos in other movies, like the 1971 Woody Allen movie Bananas where he played subway thug, Klute(1971) as an extra dancing in the club, a youth in The Prisoner of Second Avenue, 1974 a  starring role in The Lords of Flatbush

1976, Rocky
On March 24, 1975, Stallone saw the fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner, which gave him the inspiration for the movie Rocky. He went home and after 3 days or 20 hours, he came up with the script for Rocky. This movie went on to win various awards, such as Best Directing, Film Editing, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Screenplay. In the early 1980s, he starred alongside British actor Michael Caine in Escape to Victory(1981), a sports movie where he plays a prisoner of war involved in a Nazi propaganda soccer game. Also that year he starred in the movie Nighthawks, where he played a New York cop named Deak DeSilva, who plays cat and mouse with a foreign terrorist. In the year 1982, he starred in a movie that would be a trademark of his forever. In 1982, he starred as John Rambo, a battle scarred Vietnam vet in the movie First Blood(1982). There were 3 other sequels, Rambo:First Blood pt. II (1985), which had him going to southeast Asia looking for POWs from the Vietnam War, and Rambo III (1988), which had him going to the deserts of Afghanistan to rescue his commander, Col. Trautman(Richard Crenna) and Rambo(2008), in which the now retired soldier is asked by missionaries in Burma to help rescue fellow missionaries trapped by Burmese rebels. During the making of the Rocky movies, Stallone worked out like a madman

As Rocky Balboa

Escape to Victory

Nighthawks

First Blood

Rambo(2008)

During this, he started doing other kinds of movies, like Rhinestone, which was considered to be a commercial failure for him, because he sings country music in it. And in 1987, he starred as in Over the Top (1987) as a struggling trucker named Lincoln Hawk who is making his way to a nation wide arm wrestling tournament in Las Vegas, with his son, who does not think too highly of him until he sees his dad arm wrestling. In 1986, he made the movie Cobra, which was about a police officer named Marion Cobretti, nicknamed Cobra who works for the Los Angeles Police Dept, on a squad called the Zombie Squad. He is assigned to protect a model named Ingrid Knudsen (Bridgett Nielsen-Stallone) who was a living witness to a series of crimes committed by a serial killer called the Night Slasher. This movie is where he met his first wife Bridgett Nielsen. In 1989, he starred alongside Kurt Russell in Tango & Cash, where he played a straitlaced L.A. cop named Ray Tango who has to work with a rival cop named Gabe Cash (Kurt Russell) when they are framed for murder by a criminal mastermind named Yves Perret (Jack Palance) and found guilty by the courts, they are sentenced to prison where they encounter many of the guys they put away.

Over the Top

Cobra

Tango & Cash

1990-2002
In 1992, he tried comedy with Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, where he played a police officer named Joe Bomowski who receives a visit from his mother Tutti Bomowski (Estelle Getty). After she buys him an illegal MAC 10 and starts nosing in his police cases, she becomes witness to a murder of the gun dealer she bought the gun from. In 1993, he got back in to action with the movie Cliffhanger, where he played Gabe Walker, a professional mountain climber who plays cat and mouse with a group of thieves, led by professional thief Eric Qualen (John Lithgow), who was a former Military Intelligence member who looks to reclaim $100 million in uncirculated bills from the US Treasury. Later that year, he starred alongside Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man, where he played a cop named John Spartan who goes into cryogenic freezing and is later taken out to get a criminal who escaped. In 1994, he starred as Ray Quick in The Specialist. In this movie, he is a CIA explosives expert who takes a job from a woman named May Munro (Sharon Stone), who wants revenge on the Cuban mobster who killed her parents.

Cliffhanger

The Specialist

In 1995, he starred in the movie Judge Dredd, based on the British comic book 2000 AD of the same name. In the movie, he plays Judge Joseph Dredd, a very strict rule following judge until he is framed for murder of the Judge's Council by his own brother. In the 1995 movie Assassins, he played Robert Rath, a hit man who is ordered to kill a fellow hitman named Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas), who has a psychopathic way of life. And Rath is contacted by someone named Electra (Julianne Moore), who is a computer hacker. In 1997, he starred as New Jersey cop Freddy Heflin in the movie Cop Land. This movie was about a town in New Jersey called Garrison, where most of the residents are NYPD officers. In the movie, Stallone's character is asked by Internal Affairs agent Moe Tilden (Robert De Niro) to tell anything he has about the cover up of a murder of 2 black teens by a fellow officer named Murray 'Super boy' Babbitch (Michael Rapaport). In 2000, he starred in the remake of the 1971 crime drama Get Carter, where Michael Caine originally played Jack Carter, a mob enforcer. In the 2000 remake, Michael Caine had a large role in the movie.

Get Carter

Judge Dredd

2003-2005
In 2003, he played the role of a villain in the 3rd Spy Kids movie, Spy Kids 3: Game Over named The Toymaker.

2010 and on
In 2010, he starred in The Expendables, alongside Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Randy Couture and Steve Austin. Basically the movie is about where he and the rest of the guys are a group of highly trained military mercenaries who have to kill a general in a fictional island town called Vilena.