Before he became a household name as the relentless heavyweight fighter Rocky Balboa, Hollywood action icon Sylvester Stallone was just another struggling young artist trying to pay rent in New York City. In a candid interview aired on CBS Sunday Morning ahead of his September 28 live event at 92NY, the veteran actor recounted some of the most bizarre odd jobs he took during his early twenties to make ends meet before writing his Oscar-winning screenplay.
Among his wild early gigs, Stallone revealed that he spent time cleaning out lion cages at the Central Park Zoo. The job was not only physically demanding and intimidating, but it also left him with an unavoidable side effect: an overwhelming and lingering feline stench. Stallone joked that while he felt deeply for the magnificent animals, he quickly realized he smelled just like them by the time his shift ended.
With money extremely tight and no funds to spare, the future superstar could not afford trips to the local laundromat. His inventive solution was to jump directly into the shower at home while still wearing his dirty work clothes, scrubbing both himself and his outfit simultaneously in a desperate bid to eliminate the pungent odor. Stallone reflected on how those rough early years, though absurd in hindsight, built the grit that eventually drove his Hollywood breakthrough.