Everyone assumes that the longtime rivalry between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone was born from their shared desire to be known as Hollywood’s marquee action star, with things only getting more and more heated as the pair traded shots and fired barbs at each other.
As it turns out, though, there resentment goes back a decade before that, with the seeds sown back at the 1977 Golden Globe Awards, where Schwarzenegger was awarded the trophy for Best New Star thanks to his role in Stay Hungry.
Stallone was seated at the same table at the same ceremony, and after losing out in the first five categories Rocky was nominated in, Arnold couldn’t help but laugh at his opposite number’s misfortune. When the boxing classic finally snagged the prize for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Sly threw a bowl of flowers at the future Governor of California.
Just like that, a feud for the ages was born, with the Terminator icon admitting on The Graham Norton Show that things were so intense that “even our DNA hated each other.”
“We were movie rivals, but we took the competitiveness to the extreme – we each had to have the best body, we had to kill more people in our films, and we had to have the biggest guns. It got out of control, and we tried to derail each other.”
Of course, those fences were mended and a blossoming bromance formed, with Schwarzengger now of the belief that not only is Stallone “a great human being,” but the grizzled veterans are “now inseparable,” unless of course one gets invited for a trip on the other’s yacht.
