‘I ate a lot of protein’ … Ippolito re-enacts a famous scene in Rocky. Photograph: Claire Folger/Amazon MGM Studios/AP View image in fullscreen ‘I ate a lot of protein’ … Ippolito re-enacts a famous scene in Rocky. Photograph: Claire Folger/Amazon MGM Studios/AP Film Interview How did a fishmonger who starred in an adult movie make Rocky? The film about Sylvester Stallone’s amazing triumph Gwilym Mumford Belittled for his speech and looks, and so short of cash he had to sell his dog, Stallone managed to write and star in one of the greatest boxing movies ever. How does Anthony Ippolito feel about playing his hero?
Thu 29 Oct 2026 06.00 CET Share Prefer the Guardian on Google F ifty years ago this December, cinema’s greatest underdog story hit the screen, a tale about a Philadelphia ham-and-egger who takes the world heavyweight boxing champ all the way to the final bell, losing the fight on a judge’s decision but winning the hearts of a nation. That film, of course, was Rocky. Its creation, famously, was no less remarkable an underdog story – one about an out-of-work character actor with the curious name of Sylvester Stallone who wrote his own boxing movie then managed to convince a studio not only to finance it, but also to cast him in the title role. He then went one further than the character he was playing by earning the top prize: a best picture Oscar.
If you thought, half a century on, Rocky’s punching power – its unerring ability to make heroes out of zeroes – has faded, think again. This, after all, is a movie franchise whose stirring qualities are enough to make thousands of people hurtle up all 72 of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s steps every year in homage to its plucky pugilist .
View image in fullscreen ‘They told me not to get my hopes up’ …Anthony Ippolito. Photograph: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images And now Rocky has birthed a third great underdog story. This one is about a 27-year-old New Yorker who, through grit, persistence and a never-ending stream of unsolicited audition tapes, bags the role of a lifetime and propels himself into the Oscar running, alongside the likes of Tom Cruise, Matt Damon and John Malkovich. His name is Anthony Ippolito and he’s playing Sly Stallone himself in Peter Farrelly’s rousing, making-of movie I Play Rocky .
The role, which follows Stallone from his early struggles in New York to movie greatness in LA, is one Ippolito has been circling – like Ali or Tyson rounding their prey – for years, before the project even had a script. Such was his desperation to play Stallone, he started sending in self-taped performances of what he thought those making the film might be after, an experience that felt like “sending your work into the abyss – even more so when no one’s asking for your audition in the first place”.
It’s a process, Ippolito remembers with a wry smile, that could feel “a little discouraging”, particularly when film websites were tipping big names for the role – Superman David Corenswet, Jacob Elordi, even Timothée Chalamet. Ippolito recalls: “People around me said, ‘Don’t get your hopes up, they’re probably looking at bigger names. That’s Hollywood.’”
He would not be deterred, though, and his self-confidence was justified: according to Farrelly, Ippolito was the first person he and the film’s producers looked at for the part. And once they saw him there was no point in auditioning anyone else.
Speaking to Ippolito by video call from a hotel room in Rome, it’s not easy to…