Sylvester Stallone looks back at Rocky and reacts to the I Play Rocky biopic

Sylvester Stallone is looking back at the film that made him. While promoting his new memoir, the Hollywood star talked about Rocky, the 1976 boxing drama he wrote and starred in. He also talked about I Play Rocky, a Peter Farrelly film that shows how the classic was made, with Anthony Ippolito playing the young Stallone.

His first reaction to the biopic was reportedly mixed. "I'm not dead yet. Aren't we jumping the gun a little bit?" he is said to have joked. He changed his mind once he saw Ippolito's work. He said that for a moment he thought he was watching himself, and that seeing his own habits on screen made him ask, "Do I talk like that?" He said the makers did it all on their own, and he only offered to answer the young actor's questions.

Fifty years after Rocky, Stallone, who turned 80 in July, no longer calls himself an underdog. "I am a lucky dog," he reportedly said. The star of the Rocky, Rambo and The Expendables franchises is still working and is getting ready for Tulsa King. He said he gets up at 5 every morning to study his lines, and called insecurity a great motivator.

Reports say writing the memoir was not easy. Stallone said he had spent 50 years burying his early struggles, and going back to them felt like digging through a lost city. He added that he did not want the book to be a story of self pity.

He also has unfinished business with the franchise. Stallone reportedly wants Amazon to let him recut Rocky V, the 1990 film he called "a thorn in my side." He admitted he took his foot off the gas and should have directed it himself. Asked if he could reach the top of today's Hollywood, he said no. He added that a film like The Godfather would be impossible to cast now.