Sylvester Stallone Showered in His Clothes and Ate Raw Eggs Before Rocky Fame

Sylvester Stallone’s new memoir“The Steps”is full of details that sound made up but aren’t. When he arrived in New York City in 1969, he had $60 to his name and $43.60 of it set aside for rent. So he skipped the laundromat entirely and showered with his clothes on, because clean laundry simply wasn’t in the budget. His food system? Cottage cheese and three or four raw eggs a day, kept cold on a windowsill that doubled as a refrigerator.

The day-job résumé is just as good. He ushed at a movie theater for $34 a week, cleaned lion cages at Central Park Zoo, and worked at Dover Delicatessen, where an altercation landed him at“The Tombs”detention facility. His apartment at the time was smaller than a federal jail cell standard, and he shared a bathroom with ten other people. Somehow, the pursuit of acting stayed the plan.

His takeaway is blunt and quotable: total sacrifice is the price, and there is no halfway point. Read it as a memoir teaser or read it as a challenge. Either way, the guy who yelled“Adrian”once ate breakfast on a windowsill. What’s the biggest thing you’ve sacrificed for a dream? Tell us in the comments.