Stallone on a Mission

Playing a guy who acts with only his eyes and his biceps is harder than playing a fast-talking, earnest boxer, especially on a 61-year-old body. Which was one of the reasons Stallone wanted to do it. He pumped up to a freakish 209 lbs. (95 kg); in Rambo II he weighed only 168 (76 kg). And, he insists, he did it without steroids, though with the help of a prescription testosterone. "HGH [human growth hormone] is nothing. Anyone who calls it a steroid is grossly misinformed," he says. "Testosterone to me is so important for a sense of well-being when you get older. Everyone over 40 years old would be wise to investigate it because it increases the quality of your life. Mark my words. In 10 years it will be over the counter." He was in such great shape, it freaked out his co-star, Julie Benz. "I'm a runner. I sprint. And I'm extremely competitive. And he blew past me every time. And he doesn't run at all. He's that focused," she says.

So the meaning of Rambo, really, comes just from the act of making it. "This was a physical tour de force," Stallone says. David Morrell, who wrote the novel that Rambo is based on, says Stallone has been thinking of the character this way for years. "Sly phoned me two years ago and said he thought [the postmovie] Rambo would be working with scrap metal from the Vietnam era, and the metaphor was that he's a salvager and was trying to salvage his life. Sly is very big on metaphors," he says.

Is the return to Rambo a sign of a last-quarter-life crisis? It's less of a sign than what's under Stallone's right sleeve. Yesterday, he says, he finished his tattoo, and it's not subtle. It's a huge, color-saturated portrait of his wife surrounded by three roses (the middle name of each of his three daughters is Rose) and looked over by a tiger (apparently, Rocky was fond of tiger eyes). "When people read about this, they'll go 'Tattoo?' But after a certain age it takes on a different meaning," he says. "You get your first tattoo at 61, you realize, what [event] are you saving it for?"