How Anthony Ippolito muscled his way into playing Sylvester Stallone in ‘I Play Rocky’

When Anthony Ippolito heard rumblings about I Play Rocky, a movie about how Sylvester Stallone wrote and starred in the original Rocky, he immediately wanted to audition.

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Ippolito had a handful of acting credits, including playing Al Pacino in The Offer, which was a 2022 dramatization of the making of the 1972 classic The Godfather. But there was only one problem: He didn’t know how to audition for the film.

“I just really wanted to get my hat in the ring,” Ippolito told Postmedia. “I saw they were making this thing and I wondered, ‘How do I get in the conversation? How do I get seen?’ ”

The 27-year-old actor sent in an unsolicited self-tape that made its way into the hands of Academy Award-winning director Peter Farrelly.

“Without any script, I taped something just trying to capture the physicality and other little things about Stallone. Then I got my hands on the script, and I sent them some more material,” Ippolito said.

‘Anthony discovered us’

Farrelly counts the first Rocky as one of his favourite movies of all time, but despite loving Peter Gamble’s script, he wasn’t sure anyone could play Stallone.

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The moment Farrelly saw Ippolito in character as Stallone, he was sold.

“Anthony discovered us. He made a tape. He heard about the movie, somehow got the script, and made a tape of three scenes in his grandmother’s basement and sent it to my casting (director), Rick Montgomery,” Farrelly said. “Rick called me and said, ‘I got Stallone.’ He sent the tape to me and I watched it and I got very emotional watching it.”

Toronto-born actor Stephen James, who plays Apollo Creed, also landed his role quickly.

“I did it one time,” James said of his audition. “I booked an hour session and we were done in 10 minutes.”

Farrelly, who won an Oscar for directing 2018’s Green Book, said Amazon MGM, the studio releasing the film, liked the story, but was doubtful producers could find an actor who could play Stallone.

After watching Ippolito’s audition, he sent them his tape. “They called me 10 minutes afterwards and said, ‘OK, we’ll do it,’ ” he remembered.

“That kid created his own reality. I could do a TED Talk on that guy. Then he went out and gained 40 pounds — all muscle — and learned how to box. It’s a great story, but it’s the easiest casting I’ve ever done,” he said.

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Ippolito said he was drawn to the story of Stallone’s struggle to make Rocky after his desperate bid to make it as an actor stalled.

Stallone had producers and studios lining up to make his movie, but there was a catch: they didn’t want him to star. At one point, Stallone turned down offers in the $360,000 range for his Rocky screenplay if he agreed to step away.

“They offered me $30,000 for Rocky. You understand, I had $106, period … That was it,” Stallone recalled. “Then for some reason, like two people at an auction, the studios kept bidding against one another. It went up to $80,000. Now $80,000 was like $400,000 today. Then it was $200,000, which is like a million dollars. Then it went to $360,000, but I couldn’t let it go. I knew it was like giving my child away. I knew I would never get an opportunity to play a character like that.”

‘It’s mythical in its proportions’

Fifty years after its release, Ippolito sees Stallone’s dogged determination to star as the title character as a defining factor in the movie’s enduring success.

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“How (Rocky) came to be is really incredible. It’s mythical in its proportions,” Ippolito said.

Ippolito was able to get Stallone’s blessing before filming began, and called the acting legend’s endorsement “surreal.”

“He had an approval process, but he saw the materials I was sending everybody and he gave the go-ahead,” Ippolito said.

For Ippolito, his own journey to the role in I Play Rocky mirrored Stallone’s: He knew it was something he just couldn’t give up on.

“If it didn’t work out, I would have at least felt that I tried,” he said. “I would have felt OK about it. These things happen in acting.”

Ahead of the movie’s limited release Friday, Farrelly thinks I Play Rocky will be more inspiring than Stallone’s original film.

“I love Rocky, but I thought this was better than Rocky. I tell people, in that movie, Rocky had a job at the beginning and an apartment,” he said. “In real life, (Stallone) was homeless. He’s selling his dog. He’s doing things he wishes he didn’t have to do and he goes all the way. His movie wins the Oscar and … it’s all true. I read the script and I was more moved than I was watching Rocky.”

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Stallone ‘stunned’ by Ippolito’s transformation

After Stallone screened I Play Rocky in private, he said he was left “stunned” watching Ippolito’s ability to convey his story.

“I didn’t think it was that important. I really … I thought, okay, this is my journey, end of it, and I made Rocky,” he said. “I had no idea that someone like Peter Farrelly thought this is more interesting than the Rocky movie, because this is real, and that was fantasy.”

Farrelly said he was nervous for Stallone to watch the movie on his own.

“I wanted to show it to him in a theatre with a lot of people because it’s a crowd-pleaser,” Farrelly said. “If you’re watching it with a crowd, it can’t miss … Sitting alone could be troublesome. And he’s been married to a woman for 30 years who’s not in the movie. So it was nervewracking. But he watched it, loved it and said his wife bawled her eyes out. So that was good.”

With the movie about to reintroduce his underdog story to a whole new generation of moviegoers, Stallone said he’s happy his early struggles in life are getting the big-screen treatment.

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“People are going to see the journey that basically no one has ever seen before,” he said. “I didn’t know where I was going to sleep. I was lonely, scared. Then a couple of years later, fame happens.”

Ippolito said after making I Play Rocky, he has come to see Stallone’s landmark picture in a different light.

“I’ve grown to appreciate it even more than I did. I was a fan, but now I’m a huge fan,” he said. “There are so many little things that make this movie fantastic.”

At one point, the film depicts Stallone selling his Bullmastiff, Butkus, because he could no longer afford to feed him. After selling the Rocky screenplay, he bought the dog back.

“Then he puts Butkus in the movie,” Ippolito exclaimed. “There are so many things about it that make you say, ‘Wow, how is this (possible)?’ So you hear the story (how Rocky was made) and you want to be a part of it.”

I Play Rocky opens in select theatres on Nov. 13.

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