Sylvester Stallone recalls the moment Kirk Douglas punched him on the set of ‘Oscar’
Sylvester Stallone has dealt out his fair share of beatdowns in his time. Throughout his time as ‘Rocky’ right through to The Expendables franchise in the 2010s, Stallone’s trade has been in playing a tough guy who doesn’t take shit from anyone. Being able to dish them out and taking a hit are two very different things, and Stallone had to be ready for his ass-kicking when working with Kirk Douglas.
Before Stallone had managed to get his career moving in the right direction, Douglas was already an icon regarding on-screen fighters. After turning in time in the boxing movie Champion and had a turn as Spartacus. Around the time that Douglas’s time in the ring was happening, Stallone was an up-and-coming actor trying to get Rocky off the ground. Though Stallone modelled his iconic story of redemption after a fight he saw with Muhammed Ali, he wasn’t exactly prepared when he got the chance to work with Douglas on the set of Oscar.
When speaking at the AFI, Stallone talked about working on the film with Douglas on a scene involving Douglas taking a swing at him, saying: “Kirk was playing my father. The scene was supposed to be him lying in bed and giving me a ‘movie slap’. He’s lying there with his eyes closed, and they’re closed very tight, and he’s swinging, and he’s missing”.
To get the film icon riled up, Stallone proposed a challenge to Douglas in between shooting the scene, saying, “I said, ‘Look, Kirk. Ever since I made Rocky, you’ve been dying to take a shot at me. I tell you what? Go for it. I can take it. Let me have your best.’”
While Douglas had been familiar with Rocky then, one of the other crucial film roles that slipped through his fingers was Stallone’s turn as Rambo. Though executives had been eyeing Douglas for the part, a falling out led to Douglas leaving the project and Stallone stepping in instead.
By the time of Oscar, the dust had settled, but Douglas delivered the same ferocity that he would have given in his prime, with Stallone saying: “I was joking about having his best, but Kirk wasn’t. He gave me back hand, right hand, everything. Then the director said, ‘that’s beautiful, let’s do another one’. I was saying, ‘are you crazy? I’m suffering brain damage over here.’”
Although the pain took some getting used to, Stallone mentioned having the utmost respect for Douglas, saying, “Out of all the heroes that I saw on the screen growing up, no one had a greater impact than [him]. That’s probably one of the main contributing factors that made me want to go into films. And wherever Michael [Douglas] is, don’t mess with your father”.
That massive respect continued until Douglas’s passing at 103, with Stallone paying tribute to the fallen icon saying (via The Daily Mail): “The last great giant of my cinema heroes has passed on to Infinite glory. Amazing artist! The likes of which we will never ever see again”. Despite Stallone’s reputation as a movie fighter giant, Douglas was able to put the fear of God into him.
