Trivia: An icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism, Sylvester Stallone is responsible for creating two characters who have become a part of the American cultural lexicon: Rocky Balboa, the no-name boxer who overcame all odds to become a champion, and John Rambo, the courageous soldier who specialized in violent rescues and revenge. Both characters are reflections of Stallone's personal experiences and the battles he waged during his transition from a poor kid in Hell's Kitchen to one of the world's most popular stars. According to Stallone, his was not a happy childhood. On July 6, 1946, in the aforementioned part of Manhattan, Sylvester Enzio Stallone was born to a chorine and an Italian immigrant. A forceps accident during his birth severed a facial nerve, leaving Stallone with parts of his lip, tongue, and chin paralyzed. In doing so, the accident imprinted Stallone with some of the most recognizable components of his persona: the distinctively slurred (and some say often nearly incomprehensible) speech patterns, drooping lower lip, and crooked left eye that have been eagerly seized upon by caricaturists. To compound these defects, Stallone was a homely, sickly child who once suffered from rickets. His parents were constantly at war and struggling to support Stallone and his younger brother, Frank Stallone (who became a B-movie actor). The elder brother spent most of his first five years in the care of foster homes. Stallone has said that his interest in acting came from his attempts to get attention and affection from those strangers who tried to raise him. When he was five, his parents moved their family to Silver Spring, MD, but once again spent their time bickering and largely ignored their children. Following his parents' divorce in 1957, the 11-year-old Stallone remained with his stern father. The actor's teen years proved even more traumatic. As Stallone seemed willing to do just about anything for attention, however negative, he had already been enrolled in 12 schools and expelled several times for his behavior problems. His grades were dreadful and his classmates picked on him for being different. Stallone coped by becoming a risk taker and developing elaborate fantasies in which he presented himself as a brave hero and champion of the underdog. At age 15, Stallone moved to Philadelphia to be with his mother and her new husband. By this time, he had begun lifting weights and took up fencing, football, and the discus. He also started appearing in school plays. Following graduation, Stallone received an athletic scholarship for the American College of Switzerland. While there he was a girls' athletic coach and in his spare time starred in a school production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The experience inspired him to become an actor and after returning stateside, he started studying drama at the University of Miami until he decided to move to New York in 1969. While working a variety of odd jobs, Stallone auditioned frequently but only occasionally found stage work, most of which was off-Broadway in shows like the all-nude Score and Rain. He even resorted to appearing in the softcore porn film, Party at Kitty's and Studs, which was later repackaged as The Italian Stallion after Stallone became famous. Stallone's face and even his deep voice were factors in his constant rejection for stage and film roles. He did nab a bit role in Woody Allen's Bananas (1971), but after he was turned down for The Godfather (1971), Stallone became discouraged. Rather than give up, however, Stallone again developed a coping mechanism -- he turned to writing scripts, lots of scripts, some of which were produced. He still auditioned and landed a starring role in Rebel (1973). During his writing phase, he married actress Sasha Czack in late 1974 and they moved to California in the hopes of building acting careers. His first minor success came when he wrote the screenplay for and co-starred in the nostalgic Lords of Flatbush (1974) with Henry Winkler. The film's modest success resulted in Stallone's getting larger roles, but he still didn't attract much notice until he penned the screenplay for Rocky. The story was strong and well written and studios were eager to buy the rights, but Stallone stipulated that he would be the star and must receive a share of the profits. Producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff accepted Stallone's terms and Rocky (1976) went on to become one of the biggest movie hits of all time. It also won several Oscars including ones for Best Picture, Best Director for John Avildsen, and a Best Actor nomination for Stallone. Suddenly Stallone found himself on Hollywood's A-list, a status he has largely maintained over the years. In addition to writing four sequels to Rocky, he penned three Rambo films (First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Rambo 3) and F.I.S.T. (1979). Stallone made his directorial debut with Paradise Alley, which he filmed in Hell's Kitchen. He also wrote and directed but did not appear in the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive (1983). In addition, Stallone has continued to appear in the films of other directors, notably Demolition Man (1993), Judge Dredd (1995), and Copland (1997), a film in which he allowed himself to gain 30 pounds in order to more accurately portray an aging sheriff. Occasionally, Stallone has ventured out of the action genre and into lighter fare with such embarrassing efforts as Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) and Oscar (1991), which did not fare well at the box office. Following these missteps, Stallone found greater success with the animated adventure Antz (1998), a film in which his very distinctive voice, if not his very distinctive physique, was very much a part. Stallone was back in shape for the 2000 remake of Get Carter and hit the race tracks in the following year in the CART racing thriller Driven. Though the early 2000s found his career sputtering along with such forgettable duds as D-Tox and Avenging Angelo, Stallone took his career into his own hands by returning to the director's chair to resurrect two of his most iconic characters. Lacing his boxing gloves up once again for Rocky Balboa, the veteran action star proved he still had some fight left in him, and venturing into the jungles of Burma as John Rambo just two years later, he proved that hard "R" action could still sell in the era where most filmmakers were playing it "PG-13"safe. That trend continued with Stallone's all-star action opus The Expendables in 2010, with the success of that film leading to a sequel (with Simon West taking over directorial duties) featuring even more action icons in 2012. Incredibly, not even a broken neck suffered during production of The Expendables proved capable of slowing Stallone down, and 2013 found him teaming with Walter Hill for Bullet to the Head -- which followed a cop and a killer as they teamed up to take down a mutual enemy. In 2015, Stallone returned to Rocky Balboa once more, but this time as a supporting character in the spin-off film Creed. He earned rave reviews and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, making him only the sixth performer to be nominated for playing the same character in two separate films.

Trivia: Talia Shire (born Talia Coppola) attended the Yale School of Drama and landed roles in several Roger Corman films. The sister of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, she benefited from her family connection when she was cast in The Godfather (1972), launching her screen career in earnest. After receiving a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in The Godfather Part II (1974), Shire was cast by Sylvester Stallone to play his girlfriend in the hit Rocky (1976), for which she won the New York Film Critics Award and received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Although Shire went on to appear in a number of films throughout the 1980s and '90s, her career primarily revolved around the eight films emerging from the original Godfather and Rocky movies. Divorced from composer David Shire, she later married producer Jack Schwartzman; the two of them developed movie projects together, forming the TaliaFilm production company. The mother of actors Jason Schwartzman and Robert Schwartzman, Shire directed the film One Night Stand in 1994.She continued to act in a number of films including The Landlady, Lured Innocence, and Kiss the Bride. In 2004 she was cast in I Heart Huckabees playing the mother of the character portrayed by her real life son Jason Schwartzman. She appeared thanks to archival footage in Rocky Balboa. She also appeared in a pair of National Lampoon comedies.

Trivia: A former prizefighter, Burt Young opted for a less injurious profession when he began taking acting lessons from Lee Strasberg. In films from 1971, Young reached a career pinnacle as Rocky Balboa's (Sylvester Stallone) contentious brother Paulie in the 1975 megahit Rocky. He earned one of the film's ten Oscar nominations, and went on to reprise the role in all four Rocky sequels. Young's subsequent film and TV work has been largely confined to pug-like supporting roles, though he did star in the 1978 TV movie Uncle Joe Shannon, which he also scripted. Additional Burt Young credits include the Broadway play Cuba and His Teddy Bear and the role of ex-marine collegiate Nick Chase in the TV sitcom Roomies (1987).

Trivia: A football star at San Diego State, Carl Weathers played professionally with the Oakland Raiders, acting in local stage productions during the off-season. Weathers went on to play with the British Columbia Lions in the Canadian Football League, then retired from sports in 1974, the better to devote all his time to an acting career. After yeoman service in a handful of "blaxploitation" flicks, he rose to fame as the Muhammad Ali-inspired Apollo Creed in the first Rocky film. Apollo Creed's adversarial relationship with Rocky Balboa mellowed into warm friendship in the course of the next three Rocky installments; indeed, when Apollo was killed off by "superboxer" Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV (1985), the tragedy served as the motivation for the retired Rocky to climb into the ring yet once more. Weathers' post-Rocky projects have included the title role in Action Jackson (1988), the Sidney Poitier part in the 1985 TV-movie remake of The Defiant Ones, and the TV series Fortune Dane, Street Justice and Tour of Duty. In the early 1990s, Weathers replaced Howard Rollins Jr. in a group of In the Heat of the Night 2-hour TV specials. He developed a knack for comedy later in his career, appearing in Happy Gilmore, Little Nicky, and making a particularly memorable cameo in the sitcom Arrested Development as a stew-obsessed acting coach. In addition to his show business work, Carl Weathers has been active with the Big Brothers Association and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Trivia: Statuesque Danish actress Brigitte Nielsen was once married to Sylvester Stallone. As for her career achievements...uh....Statuesque Danish actress Brigitte Nielsen was once married to Sylvester Stallone. Well, let's be fair: she wasn't bad as the comic-book sword 'n' sorcery heroine Red Sonja in the 1985 film of the same name. And she certainly filled the costumes (what there were of them) in Domino (89) and Chained Heat 2 (93). To fully assess the thespic skills of Brigitte Nielsen, one must witness her starkly realistic performance as a curvaceous NASA detective in the lunar looney tune Murder by Moonlight (93). Appearances in minor films would continue for Nielsen throughout the 90's and 2000's, but the actress's second wind would come in the form of reality TV. After a memorable stint on VH1's The Surreal Life in 2004, Nielsen would go on to appear on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

Trivia: American actor Michael Pataki's first film credit was 1958's Ten North Frederick. In the early phases of his career, Pataki was reminiscent of a young Rod Steiger; in point of fact, he played the 25-year-old version of the Steiger character in the made-for-TV The Movie Maker (1965). His later television work included the weekly series Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers (1974), as Sand's brother Charlie; Spider-Man (1977), as Captain Barbera; and Phyl and Micky (1980), as Soviet consular official Vladimir Jimenko. The Slavic nature of the last-named role was typical of the sort of characters Pataki played in the 1980s, which included Nikoli Koloff in Rocky IV (1985) and Rocky V (1990). Additionally, Pataki is among those lucky thespians who played guest spots on both the original Star Trek and its 1987 grandchild Star Trek: The Next Generation. On the production side, Pataki was director of the soft-core sex farce Cinderella and the low-budget scarefest Mansion of the Doomed (both 1977), and served as producer of the 1981 TV adaptation of Broadway's Pippin. More recently, Michael Pataki was heard as "The Sewer King" on the animated TVer Batman: The New Adventures (1992).

Trivia: Highly intelligent and extremely well educated -- earning an M.A. at Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology and a Fulbright Fellowship at M.I.T. -- Dolph Lundgren is better known for his athletic achievements than his intellectual pursuits. An internationally recognized kick-boxing champion, the 6' 6", 250-pound Lundgren was working as a doorman at a trendy New York disco when his personally produced exercise video Maximum Potential caught the eye of movie producers. His 1984 cinematic debut was a bit part in the James Bond opus A View to a Kill, which co-starred Lundgren's then-lover Grace Jones. (Earlier reports that Lundgren appeared in 1970's The Out-of-Towners were really out of town.) His breakthrough film role was as Drago, the automaton-like Russian ring opponent of Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV (1985). The content of Lundgren's subsequent films is implicit in their titles: Masters of the Universe (in which Lundgren played bulging-biceped cartoon character He-Man), Universal Soldier (sharing the screen with fellow bodybuilder Jean-Claude Van Damme), Red Scorpion, Showdown in Little Tokyo, Army of One, etc. When Lundgren showed up as a street preacher in the futuristic Johnny Mnemonic (1995), one got the feeling that he was not going to be advocating peace on earth for long.