Sylvester Stallone opened up about his marriage, fatherhood and politics in a revealing new interview.
During a conversation with the Sunday Times, the Rocky star, 76, spoke openly about his split from wife Jennifer Flavin, which occurred when she left him back in August and filed for divorce after 25 years of marriage. However, the couple reconciled the next month.
“Let’s just say that it was a very tumultuous time,” Stallone explained. “There was a reawakening of what was more valuable than anything, which is my love for my family. It takes precedence over my work and that was a hard lesson to learn.”
Upon their reconciliation, a spokesperson for the couple told Page Six, “They decided to meet back up at home, where they talked and were able to work out their differences. They are both extremely happy.”
The couple share three daughters. Looking back on his earlier days of parenting, Stallone — who also has two sons, including Sage, who died in 2012 — expressed his deep remorse for being an absentee father who was entirely focused on his film career.
“I didn’t pay enough attention when they were growing up,” Stallone admitted. “I was so career-oriented and now I go, ‘OK, I don’t have that much runway up ahead and I want to start asking them about their lives.’ I ask them about their day and they started at first a little monosyllabic. Then I heard one say, ‘I was just thinking about you.’ Oh my God. I’ve never heard that before in my life. When a daughter knows you care, she’s there forever.”
Stallone also revealed how he came to understand politics, recognizing that he was often assumed to be a member of the Republican Party, despite voting for both parties at times. That association with Republicans came largely from the patriotic point of view of his films.
“I didn’t even know what a Republican or a Democrat was until I was 30 years old,” Stallone shared. “I really didn’t until I went to Hollywood. I didn’t know wrapping myself in a flag in Rocky would throw down the gauntlet.”
While his hugely successful Rambo franchise immediately associated him with military skills and firearms knowledge, the actor and director says he has mixed feelings about certain aspects of gun control, including the popularity of automatic weapons.
“I don’t see a purpose in hunting with a 40-round magazine,” he said. “If you can’t hit something in five shots, then you’re not a very good hunter. To be able to buy a weapon that I can change in one second to automatic? I don’t see it. You can’t take guns away, they’ve been ingrained for 250 years, but you have to take the irresponsibility out of it.”
