Born on July 6, 1946, in Hell’s Kitchen, N.Y., an infamous section of the Big Apple. Michael Sylvester Enzio Stallone (nicknamed Sly) was hard pressed to find a good life. His first five years of childhood was spent in foster homes due to his parent’s (Frank and Jacqueline) bad marriage.
Hell’s Kitchen was an area around 39th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues and was first named this in 1881 when a reporter was detailing a multiple murder. It was known as the worst of New York and the name stuck as Hell's Kitchen. The named area expanded with the city crime to include a large section of the city.
Stallone’s major disadvantage in his youth was a crooked eye, drooping lower lip and slurred speech that were all caused at birth from a forceps accident that severed a facial nerve. Undaunted by ridicule and teasing, he honed his life with goals of accomplishment and is now known as one of the finest directors, writers, producers and actors of major box office hits.
His father, Frank, was a hairdresser and mother Jacqueline was an eccentric who's also sought fame as an astrologer and women's wrestling promoter.
He was reunited with his brother, Frank (actor), at the age of five in Maryland but this was short lived as his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Philadelphia when she remarried. With lousy grades and no direction in his life, he was sent to a private school for troubled youth after being expelled from 10 other schools. As a delinquent youth he still had ambitions that didn’t conform to others.
Later Stallone had the opportunity to study at an American college in Switzerland after high school. He took some acting classes and found the niche that he felt was the answer to his life.
His first role on stage was in the Death of a Salesman . He enrolled in the University of Miami but soon left, three credits short of graduating, to pursue a career back in New York where he started.
Stallone’s goal was to act and at the beginning he took what he could get. His first appearances were not the usual. He appeared in an all-nude Broadway show entitled Score. His first film appearances where two soft porn movies Party at Kitty's and Studs (which was re-released and re-named "The Italian Stallion" after Stallone's "Rocky" success). He was paid $200 to play the sex-craved gigolo and appeared nude in almost every scene.
