Review: Sylvester Stallone was never supposed to make it

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Set us as preferred One thing is obvious upon reading Sylvester Stallone’s memoir “The Steps”: He’s no nepo baby.No one ever gave him a leg up, or pulled favors on his behalf.

This breezy and insightful book, which takes the movie icon from the slums of New York to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, triumphant on Oscar night, is a sobering reminder of just how far Stallone had to go to make it.It’s also a primer on perseverance and tenacity, both of which the movie icon needed in abundance to find his way.Young Sly was a prime candidate for a life of thuggery, reared by parents who had no business raising kids.

Sly and his parents lived in a tiny cold water flat in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, at a time when that neighborhood was a breeding ground for gangs and prostitution.“You learned to mind your own business, and to never walk down the sidewalk, but rather in the street, to avoid being pulled into an alleyway and robbed,” Stallone writes.

The bath was a dining table; a piece of plywood was laid over it for meals.Frank Senior was a barber who dreamed of being a singer, a nasty cur who beat his two sons and verbally whittled them down to a nub.

(Sly’s brother Frank Jr., four years younger, was born in Maryland and the boys grew up primarily in Philadelphia).Their mother, meanwhile, was a beautiful narcissist who was convinced she had missed her chance at a Hollywood career by marrying Stallone’s father and being saddled with two kids to raise.

For Stallone, this was the scar that never healed.The Steps: A MemoirBy Sylvester StalloneWilliam Morrow: 304 pages, $32.50If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.Despite his parents’ showbiz failures, Stallone was convinced that he was destined for success as an actor.He managed to bum his way to Europe, where he hoped to get a proper education at an institut...