Do we like Sylvester Stallone?
Our score: 6 out of 10. No harmful words about any group turned up and there's real charity, but the Trump praise and two denied or disputed allegations keep it middling.
Stallone calls himself an “unplanned and unwanted child” who grew up on the streets of Philadelphia and went to Catholic school. As a struggling actor-writer he talked United Artists into backing Rocky with himself in the lead, despite little acting experience. The film won Best Picture, and Rambo and The Expendables followed. In his words, “insecurity is a great motivator.”
The Trump thing is the main reason this card isn't a clean sweep. At a Mar-a-Lago gala in November 2024 he introduced the president-elect as “the second George Washington” and said “We are in the presence of a really mythical character.” He was also a Kennedy Center honoree in December 2025, at a ceremony Trump hosted.
Trump named him one of three Hollywood “special ambassadors” in early 2025. In a September 2026 Times interview he said he never formally accepted and found out from TV: “It just happened.” He said he told Trump the idea wouldn't work and that Hollywood “works and it will evolve.” So he's distancing himself from the title, though the Washington praise is on the record.
On the harm test, we searched for his own words on trans people, gay people, women, migrants, vaccines and climate and found nothing harmful from him. That's a gap, not a certificate. We also didn't find a run of projects with people pushing harm. Praising a president isn't harm on its own, and you can weigh how you read it.
On the good-person side, a 2017 report by the Daily Mail, based on a decades-old police report, alleged he and a bodyguard had inappropriate sexual contact with a 16-year-old in a Las Vegas hotel in 1986. His representative called it “ridiculous, categorically false” and said he was never contacted by authorities. In 2024 the New York Daily News reported allegations, from screenshots reportedly posted in a private Facebook group, that he mocked background actors on Tulsa King. The show's director disputed them, and two extras told The Hollywood Reporter they saw nothing unusual.
The good stuff is real. He and his wife received an Award of Inspiration at an amfAR gala in 2024, where a painting of his sold for $410,000 for AIDS research. He has also put his name to charity auctions. And a kid nobody wanted, who wrote himself into the lead of a Best Picture winner, is a hard story not to like.