Academy Awards voters love a good comeback, and this year's biggest "comeback kid" is the most unlikely one in years: 69-year-old Sylvester Stallone, who scored a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for playing his beloved creation Rocky Balboa in "Creed."
It all went so wrong so quickly for Stallone back in his prime. In 1976, he swept to stardom with the thrilling, melancholic "Rocky," earning Oscar nominations for best actor and best screenplay. The movie itself won the best picture Oscar. Hollywood had a new, unlikely champion, a palooka who, unlike Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy, really could be a contender.
After "Rocky," Stallone continued to show off his ambitious creative intent with "Paradise Alley" and "F.I.S.T.," but the diminishing returns were difficult to ignore. By the early 1980s, he'd abandoned serious work and embraced cartoons. He made blood-bath action pictures ("Rambo: First Blood Part II," "Cobra") and aggressively dumb, if sometimes endearing, comedies ("Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot," "Rhinestone"). This made him fabulously rich, but he became a punching bag for critics. The Razzie Awards, which celebrate the worst in cinema, gave him the Worst Actor of the 1980s award. The Razzies sucker-punched him again a decade later with the Worst Actor of the 20th Century award, recognizing him "for 99.5 percent of everything he has EVER done."
By this time he had become best known for his fraught romantic life (his marriages to pre-stardom sweetheart Sasha Stallone and then bombshell Brigitte Nielsen blew up publicly) and his worries about aging (writers at Hollywood junkets were told to not ask about his hairline). In 2007, he pleaded guilty in Australia to importing banned substances after getting caught bringing human growth hormone and testosterone into the country. He said he takes the steroids for a medical condition.
Stallone did make a comeback way back in 1997, earning kudos for his performance in James Mangold's "Cop Land." But it didn't stick. "Cop Land's" slow-witted cop Freddy Heflin wasn't an iconic character like Rocky Balboa. Stallone was soon back to making mindless mayhem pictures like "The Expendables."
But now he might win an acting Oscar for his most iconic role, having just taken home the Golden Globe for the performance. And he's also up for another Razzie, but this time that's a good thing. He's in the running for the Razzie's Redeemer Award, given to actors and directors who embarrassed themselves in the past but who got up off the canvas and went on to win. Surely he's wondering if "Creed" writer-director Ryan Coogler would be willing to take a shot at the Rambo franchise next.