Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were two of the biggest action stars of the 1980s and 1990s, but they were hardly the best of friends.
Schwarzenegger, in an interview with Forbes, once again discussed the rivalry between the two actors, saying it went beyond what most people would consider a healthy race to be the best.
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, we would do anything to derail each other,” Schwarzenegger said. “And it was all kind of in the spirit of competition. He’s a very competitive person, so am I. So when you compete, competition creates performance. We both look at those years and say it was good we had that competition because I went all out to outdo him and he went all out to outdo me. … But, he just saw me as the enemy just in his own little vision and I saw him as the enemy and I had to get rid of him and he had to get rid of me and that was it.”
But somewhere in the 1990s, the actors decided enough was enough and decided to bury the hatchet, Schwarzenegger said.
“We came together and said this is silly, let’s just all work together and we became really good friends,” he said.
Stallone has acknowledged the bad blood in previous interviews. In November, he was a guest on Britain’s The Jonathan Ross Show and said the reason he opted to make the much-derided 1992 film Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (with Estelle Getty) was because Schwarzenegger has spread rumors around town that he was excited to do the movie, hoping Stallone would take it from him.
That film has a 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.