Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have been two of the biggest action stars in Hollywood for decades. What their fans might be surprised to learn, however, is that the two of them were in a bitter feud with one another for many years.
Now, in a new interview, Schwarzenegger is opening up about this “nasty” feud. He’s also revealing how he and Stallone finally squashed their beef and became friends.
‘We Hated Each Other’
“We hated each other,” Schwarzenegger, 77, recently told Andy Cohen on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy.
Schwarzenegger and Stallone, 78, feuded throughout the 1980s. Since they were arguably the two biggest action stars of the time, perhaps they felt threatened by one another as they potentially vied for the same roles.
“We were kind of attacking each other and doing nasty things and saying nasty things about each other and all these stupid thing,” Schwarzenegger recalled.
Schwarzenegger And Stallone Reconcile
It took decades, but the two stars finally managed to reconcile in a surprising way. Indeed, their reconciliation involved a business venture that they both found themselves part of.
“All of a sudden, I started working with Robert Earl and Keith Parish to create the Planet Hollywood franchise, those restaurants,” Schwrazenegger recounted. “The next thing I know is I get a phone call from my lawyer, who was also Sly’s lawyer, he said, ‘Arnold, is there any kind of room for Sly in Planet Hollywood?’”
Schwarzenegger remembers thinking, “’That’s actually a good idea, because it could bring us together.’ And I wanted that. At that point I had grown out of my craziness.”
Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and various other A-listers teamed up to launch Planet Hollywood in New York City in 1991.
“Sure enough, we made it work,” Schwarzenegger said of himself and Stallone. “And Bruce Willis became part of Planet Hollywood, Whoopi Goldberg became part of Planet Hollywood, Chuck Norris… It really was kind of an international cast.”
Watch Schwarzenegger talk more about this in the video below.
Related: Chris Pratt Praises Father-In-Law Arnold Schwarzenegger – ‘Means The World To Me’
Origins Of This Feud
Schwarzenegger and Stallone would go on to star together onscreen in the Expendables movies and in the 2013 film Escape Plan. In the years since then, they’ve been open about how their feud came to be.
“We were movie rivals, but we took the competitiveness to the extreme — we each had to have the best body, we had to kill more people in our films, and we had to have the biggest guns,” Schwarzenegger said while appearing on The Graham Norton Show in October of 2023.
“It got out of control, and we tried to derail each other,” he continued.
Last year, Stallone recalled when Schwarzenegger burst onto the Hollywood scene. Stallone remembers thinking, “Finally, something to motivate me. Because he is, dare I say it, competition, a threat, whatever word you wanna use. As soon as I saw him, it was like bang, two alphas hitting.”
“There’s no two ways about that: He was very helpful in my career because I had something that I could chase,” Schwarzenegger said in agreement.
These days, according to Schwarzenegger, he and Stallone are “fantastic friends” who “are now inseparable.”
Schwarzenegger and Stallone are two living legends in the action movie world. Indeed, they have far more in common than they ever could have imagined in their younger days.
In the end, we could all learn a lot from how Schwarzenegger and Stallone put their bitter feud behind them to become good buddies!
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