Rocky's girls: 'We’re not just about shopping: we can throw a punch'

This was when I was still in my figurative phase.’ It’s another balmy 75-degree morning in Beverly Hills and I’m standing beside Sylvester Stallone contemplating one of the canvases on his living-room walls. As vast as a Pollock and haunting as a Munch, the painting is dated 1989 and features a screaming skull-like face breaking through a tangle of primary-coloured graffiti.

‘I used industrial paint,’ the Oscar-nominated star mutters in his bass staccato. Like Warhol, I say, gesturing at the two silk-screen portraits of the actor hanging on the adjacent wall. And from the canvas hanging in the entrance hall, I’m guessing he’s a Miró fan? ‘Miró’s been an inspiration,’ Stallone flings back, scrutinising me suddenly from behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses. ‘You know about art?’ I murmur something about an art-history A-level, and the absurdity of bringing up A-levels in front of Rocky Balboa coupled with a nagging concern about whether to call him Sylvester or Sly (too familiar?) prompts a wave of heat to travel up my face. That’s when it dawns on me that I’m star-struck. 

Now journalists don’t get star-struck. Or at least they shouldn’t ever admit to it, even to themselves. But this is Stallone: one of very few Hollywood legends capable of setting off that adolescent ‘I can’t believe I’m standing here’ ticker tape inside your head. And not only is the 69-year-old surprisingly charismatic in the tightly packed 5ft 10in bronzed flesh, but he’s the man of the moment.

Once ‘synonymous with blunt-force trauma’ (his words), the actor has for the past two months been the toast of Hollywood thanks to an impressive performance in Creed – the seventh film in the Rocky franchise, in which Balboa turns trainer to Michael B Jordan’s newcomer, Adonis Johnson. 

Having waited 40 years to be anointed by his own industry, the son of a New York City hair-salon owner and his astrologer wife was reduced to tears at the Golden Globes and the Critics’ Choice awards in January, where both wins (for supporting roles) were accompanied by standing ovations. Scooping the award at tomorrow’s Oscars wouldn’t just round off the best two months of his professional life, he tells me. ‘It would be the pinnacle of a long and varied career. Simply put, a modern-day miracle – and one I would love my wonderful family to witness.’

Actually Stallone’s family are the reason I’m here. When the soft-centred hard man turned up at the Golden Globes flanked by his ex-model wife Jennifer Flavin and three daughters, Scarlet, 13, Sistine, 17, and Sophia, 19 – or as Us Weekly put it, ‘the ultimate glam squad’ – social media erupted, with many speculating that the Stallone girls were destined to become reality-TV stars. 

Having spent the morning with them, I’m thinking this is unlikely. These three aren’t funhouse-mirror versions of one another like the Kardashians, and Flavin – a warm and softly spoken 47-year-old with extraordinary juniper-coloured eyes – is a far cry from steely ‘momager’ Kris Jenner. Her daughters may be absurdly pretty (thanks to the freak genetic law that allows celebrity offspring to take after the better-looking parent) and well mannered, but while Sistine is already an established model with three Teen Vogue spreads to her name and Sophia is immersed in a communications degree (‘with a minor in entrepreneurship and film, because I’m much more like my dad’) at the University of Southern California, Scarlet, the tomboy, grits her teeth through the hair and make-up for our shoot when all she really wants to be doing is playing basketball. 

Only once do the girls’ divergent voices come together to vocalise precisely the same thought, and that’s a dismayed, ‘Oh no.’ It comes as I read out the best-supporting-actor nominees their father will be up against on Oscar night: Tom Hardy, Christian Bale and Mark Ruffalo. ‘I love Mark Ruffalo,’ Sophia whispers. ‘I mean not as much as Dad…’ Sistine chimes in, ‘But hopefully Dad will have the age factor over them? You know, 39 years after his first Oscar nomination. And the fact that nobody really expects him to be there may give him a little edge over everyone else. I mean, his story is so cool: there’s someone who started out with nothing and ended up here, nearly 40 years later.’ 

‘The house that Rocky bought’ – as Stallone is fond of quipping to guests when he welcomes them into the 16,000 sq ft Tuscan-style mansion he has lived in since 1998 – is where the girls will be watching the Oscars tomorrow night.

‘My stomach’s turning just thinking about it,’ says Sistine. ‘We were all crying so hard at the Globes when he won,’ Sophia explains.‘We honestly did not think he was going to win and then when they announced his name we all looked at each other and started bawling.’ ‘Every time I think about it I get tears in my eyes,’ Flavin says, smiling. ‘I mean, he’s going to be 70 this year, and he has worked so hard for so long.’

She pauses. ‘I don’t think a lot of people know who Sly is. They don’t understand that he’s an artist, a writer, director, producer and actor: he’s done it all. They just think he’s the character – Rambo or Rocky. And in a way it’s a compliment because he got caught up in action films for so many years and was so good at them that he just couldn’t break out.’ 

Had Stallone sold the rights to the first Rocky in 1976 – when United Artists offered him a generous $250,000 for them, with the caveat that he couldn’t star in the film – the actor’s career would have followed a very different path. ‘He had $200 to his name back then,’ Sistine tells me. ‘But he was so smart not to sell off Rocky. And I love that he had enough faith in this one character he had created to just say no.’

‘Plus it’s cool that after all these years being typecast as a screaming, bloodthirsty, Expendables-type man,’ Sophia interjects, ‘all of a sudden he comes back with Creed, and instead of screaming and brandishing a knife, he’s finally vulnerable, sensitive and human, holding a Pomeranian and walking slowly down the hall. It’s a 360-degree view of him – and that’s what’s so great.’ 

The two older girls can still remember watching Rocky for the first time. ‘Sistine and I were sleeping in the same room,’ recalls Sophia, ‘and of course we’d seen parts of it, but one night we decided to watch the whole thing.’ And? ‘And it was weird… For so long all these people kept saying to us, “Aren’t you freaking out? Your father is Rocky!” But to us he’s always just been Dad: an ordinary guy and an ordinary dad.’ Except that their ordinary dad had them in tiny Everlast gloves from nursery school onwards.

‘Sly started them boxing when they were four,’ Flavin admits. ‘Every day before school they would have to box, throw a baseball or do push-ups and sit-ups – and I mean the real “boy” kind.’ ‘He’s always liked to rough us up,’ Sistine adds affectionately. ‘He’ll come home and want to play really roughly. But thanks to Dad, we can throw a good punch. From when we were little he taught all three of us how to be strong and defend ourselves. So if ever there was a bully at school he would say, “Just swing. Show them what I taught you.” And trust me, it paid off. Now when the boys say, “She throws like a girl,” we can say, “Like a girl looks like this, by the way.” Because we’re not just about shopping: we can throw a punch, we can pitch and we can run faster than a boy.’

Today the whole family still works out en masse in the home gym, although Stallone does have a separate man cave-cum-artist’s studio where he likes to bench-press and paint. ‘It’s funny,’ Sistine says, laughing, ‘because we’re all bumping into each other and we’ll have this loud rap music playing.’ Their dad likes rap? ‘He does – and he gets really excited when his name is mentioned in the song. So he loves Bryson Tiller’s Rambo.’

For a time, however, the actor’s eldest daughter was forced to abstain. Sophia was born with a hole in her heart and has had to undergo two open-heart surgeries, the most recent in 2012. ‘But I can do everything now,’ she chirps. ‘I just have these scars,’ she says, pointing out a silvery line running down the centre  of her chest. ‘And, actually, I feel like a better person today because of what happened – more of an old soul, I guess. It forced me to grow up, seeing my mum and dad freaking out the way they did. Watching them crying and looking so terrified meant that I had to hold it together, and when I was getting a little woozy just before, I remember looking at mum and dad crying and saying to them, “I love you and I will come out of this.”’

Although Sophia was able to attend the Bal des Débutantes in Paris (formerly the Crillon Ball) a month before the surgery ‘and dance with my dad – which was the first time I’d ever done that and the best moment for me’, Flavin still feels sad that her daughter was unable to enjoy her teenage years in a normal way. ‘Sophia had never had a boyfriend at that time and she should have been thinking about school and going on dates, not going through something so heavy.’

Dates? According to the gossip magazines, all three girls have been banned from having any kind of romantic liaison until mid-to-late middle-age. ‘Dad puts up this whole, “You’re not allowed to date my daughter until she turns 40” front,’ Sistine laughs, ‘but he’s actually OK with it. I’ve never had a boyfriend but Sophia has…’ ‘And it was a weird moment when my ex-boyfriend came over for the first time,’ her sister confesses. ‘The first thing Dad did was grab his hand in a really hard handshake and say, “Your grip isn’t hard enough. Stronger! Stronger!” Then every time he came over after that we’d have to go through the same thing to see if he’d improved his grip. It was pretty funny. But generally it’s my mum who’s in charge of dating rules and advice.’ 

When it comes to the girls’ fashion choices – what they go out in or post on Instagram – Flavin is also the one to tell them to ‘go upstairs and change’. ‘Dad will sometimes look surprised and say, “You look a lot more mature,”’ Sistine muses, ‘but with him it’s more likely to be us telling him to go upstairs and change. He’s had the worst fashion trends.’ She sighs. Sophia is a little more diplomatic. ‘He’s gone through phases where there were real hits and misses,’ she accepts, ‘and he did go through a very bad phase, but now he can finally put together a really nice suit… That said, he’ll sometimes try and go out wearing orange-framed glasses and a patterned suit, and we’ll all have to say, “What do you think you’re wearing?’’’ 

It is starting to become clear that, for all his public success and machismo, Stallone is a deeply – and tenderly – handbagged man on the home front. ‘Does he ever feel outnumbered?’ Sistine repeats, incredulous, when I ask. ‘Absolutely. Every time we get a new dog he begs us to “get a male dog – and get some dominance in his house”.’ ‘Then,’ giggles Sophia, ‘he gets so upset when we neuter them. “Great,” he’ll say, “just when I get another man in the house you have to go and take that away from me.”’

Catching each other’s eye for a second, all three girls have the good grace to share a ‘poor Dad’ look – before succumbing to renewed hysteria. And when I see Stallone at the Hollywood Reporter party two nights later, all bodyguarded-up and parting crowds like the walking comeback story that he is, I no longer feel star-struck by the legend, but I do feel touched by the man. Wishing him good luck for tomorrow, I even call him Sly.