Stallone Biopic Star Reveals Drastic 40-Lb. Weight Gain for ‘I Play Rocky’

Chartoff-Winkler Productions/United Artists The actor who portrays Sylvester Stallone in an upcoming biopic is revealing the drastic measures he took to resemble the Rocky star.

Anthony Ippolito revealed in an interview with GQ magazine that he gained 40 pounds to play Sylvester Stallone in I Play Rocky , the upcoming biopic about the making of the 1976 boxing classic.

The 27-year-old actor said he spent nearly two years changing his physique for the role.

“It was a lifestyle shift, and it was a priority in my life for a great deal of time,” Ippolito said.

“It was just a really arduous process.” I Play Rocky follows Stallone as a struggling actor trying to get Rocky made while insisting on playing the lead himself.

The biopic premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12.

It opens in select theaters on November 6, then expands nationwide on November 20.

Ippolito said he spent most of the bulking phase training five days a week before adding boxing, cardio, and twice-daily workouts closer to filming.

“In the beginning, it was just me.

Then they brought on two wonderful trainers, Grant Roberts and Kirk Myers, through the last five months of the process,” he shared.

“It was kind of just me trying to eat the amount that I needed to eat, get in those macros, and really try to put size on to get that shape and that silhouette of the man that a lot of people, a lot of fans of the franchise, have come to know,” Ippolito said.

“I wasn’t trying to shed all of [the fat],” Ippolito added.

“We were trying to match Sly’s body as closely as we could.” In 2022, Ippolito played a young Al Pacino in Paramount’s The Offer , which chronicled the making of The Godfather.

He told GQ that the two roles have left him feeling “very fortunate and a bit spoiled” to portray two major Hollywood stars.