Sylvester Stallone vs Arnold Schwarzenegger: The Ultimate Action Hero Rivalry

Comparison

Note: Rocky vs Terminator: The Friendly-Enemy Rivalry That Ruled the 80s

Two Kings of the Action Era

For most of the 1980s and early 90s, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were the two biggest action stars on the planet. Stallone had Rocky and Rambo, while Schwarzenegger had Conan and the Terminator. Between them they owned the box office, the gyms, and the poster racks of every video store in America. Fans loved picking sides, and the two stars fed that rivalry with jokes, macho talk, and constant competition.

They came from completely different worlds. Stallone was a struggling actor and screenwriter who wrote Rocky in three days and refused to sell the script unless he could star in it. Schwarzenegger was a bodybuilding champion from Austria who turned an unpronounceable last name into one of the most famous brands in entertainment.

The Constant One-Upmanship

The rivalry played out in the press with endless ribbing. They took shots at each other's bodybuilding backgrounds, acting skills, and movie choices. Schwarzenegger teased Stallone about small roles early in his career, and Stallone returned fire about Arnolds accent and his habit of playing robots and soldiers. Behind the jokes, though, both men were genuinely competitive, matching each other's paydays and trying to outdo the other's box office numbers on every single release.

Some of the competition was friendly and some of it was sharp. They raced to be the first to make big-budget comedies, and when Schwarzenegger's Predator and Stallone's Rambo III hit around the same time, the press turned the two releases into a heavyweight match. Even their production decisions, like who would play a comic book hero first, became fodder for gossip columns.

When the Careers Turned

Schwarzenegger's star kept climbing through the 90s, peaking with Terminator 2 and True Lies, before he jumped into California politics. Stallone's career wobbled harder in the late 90s with misses like Judge Dredd and The Specialist, and for a while it looked like the rivalry was over with a clear winner. Stallone later admitted those years were rough and that he envied how smoothly Arnold moved from blockbusters into the governors mansion.

But Stallone engineered one of the great comebacks in Hollywood history. He rebooted Rocky with 2006's Rocky Balboa, then in 2010 launched The Expendables, an ensemble movie that packed dozens of aging action heroes onto one screen. Schwarzenegger either declined or was not involved in the first film, but by the second one he had signed on, and the two old rivals finally shared scenes together.

Rivals Become Teammates

Once they started working together, the tone changed from rivalry to friendship. They starred side by side in The Expendables sequels and then in Escape Plan in 2013, where the two icons played prisoners plotting an escape from a high-tech jail. Interviews around those films were full of genuine mutual respect, with each man crediting the other for raising the bar and keeping the action genre alive for so many years.

Both have said out loud that the competition actually made them better. Schwarzenegger has joked that Stallone was his greatest rival and also a good friend, and Stallone has returned the compliments, even poking gentle fun at their shared refusal to slow down.

The Story of Two Brothers, Sort Of

Looking back, the two careers mirror each other in weird ways. Both men co-owned restaurants, both were married to famous women, both had comebacks in the 2010s, and both tried to expand past action movies. They even both ribbed each other over who had the better catchphrases and who visited the other's country first. Some outlets still call them brothers from different mothers, and by now the description fits better than calling them enemies.

The rivalry ended the way most great rivalries do: with respect, nostalgia, and a shared history that both men clearly enjoy telling. In the end they swapped enemy status for the title of two of the last giants of the era when action stars were bigger than the movies themselves.

Fun Facts

• Schwarzenegger has admitted he actively tried to beat Stallone's box office numbers in the 80s and 90s.
• The two spent years trading insults in magazines and on late-night talk shows before ever sharing a screen.
• Arnold once offered Stallone a role in an early film project, which Stallone turned down.
• Both men spent stretches of the 90s trying comedy and family films with mixed results.
• Schwarzenegger served as Governor of California from 2003 to 2011 while Stallone kept making action movies.
• Escape Plan paired the two as prison escape partners in 2013, a dream matchup for fans of the rivalry.
• Both were inducted into the Guinness World Records around the same years for highest-paid actor deals.
• Stallone named his dog in the Rocky movies after himself: Butkus, also the name of his real-life dog.
• By the 2010s the two were openly calling each other friends and praising each other's work.