High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone (born July 6, 1946), nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, director and screenwriter. One of the biggest box office draws in the world from the 1970s to the 1990s, Stallone is an icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism. He has played two characters who have become a part of the American cultural lexicon: Robert "Rocky" Balboa, the boxer who overcame odds to fight for love and glory, and John James Rambo, a courageous but troubled soldier who specialized in violent rescue and revenge missions. During the 1980s and the better part of 1990s, he was one of the biggest movie stars in the world with the Rocky and Rambo franchises along with several other mega blockbuster hit films. Stallone's film Rocky was inducted into the National Film Registry as well as having its film props placed in the Smithsonian Museum.