Rocky Facts

Sylvester Stallone painted Rocky before he wrote him. In 1975, broke and typecast as a movie villain, he painted a self-portrait called "Finding Rocky." He carved the eyes with a screwdriver to get the sadness right. The script came later. Stallone never stopped painting after that. In 2021, Germany's Osthaus Museum Hagen gave him his full museum retrospective. Nearly 50 canvases, timed to his 75th birthday.

Sylvester Stallone arrived in Los Angeles with his wife, a bullmastiff and little money left, and the one friend he could call was Henry Winkler, the Fonz. Winkler showed up and steered them to a motel they could afford for maybe two nights. Stallone went on to write Rocky. In his new memoir, he says Winkler came like a god-send.