Sylvester Stallone Says He Rejected Trump's Hollywood Ambassador Role: "It's Impossible"

Sylvester Stallone says he turned down a role as special ambassador to Hollywood, and he didn’t need long to think about it. In a new interview with The Sunday Times, the actor says he told the President,“Thank you and ciao,”calling the job impossible because the film industry operates like a collection of independent“feudal states.”His point: six major studios, six separate kingdoms, and nobody from the outside gets to walk in and hand out instructions.

The timeline makes it even stranger. Trump announced in early 2025 that Stallone would serve as a special envoy to Hollywood alongside Mel Gibson and Jon Voight. But Stallone says he only found out he’d been named while watching TV, and he had already declined the offer before the announcement even happened.

So where does that leave things? Jon Voight has actually been working the role, advocating for a federal tax credit for US-made film and TV productions, an idea Trump echoed in late August when he urged Congress to pass a Federal Production Incentive for entertainment jobs. One envoy is pushing policy, one never signed on, and the whole thing raises a bigger question about whether Washington can really steer Hollywood at all.

Would you have taken the job, or is“thank you and ciao”the right call?