EXCLUSIVE: Oscar nominee Matt Dillon ( Crash ) has been tapped to play Frank Stallone Sr., father of Sylvester Stallone, in Amazon MGM Studios ‘ I Play Rocky , the making-of- Rocky movie from director Peter Farrelly, where Anthony Ippolito stars as a young Sylvester.

Immigrating to the U.S. from Italy as a teenager, Stallone Sr. was a hairdresser who in the course of his life wound up opening a series of barber shops, salons and beauty schools across the East Coast. As recounted in Sly , Netflix’s 2023 documentary on Sylvester, Stallone Sr. was a complicated man — hardworking and charismatic, but at the same time both physically and emotionally abusive to his son. In the doc, Sylvester remembers, “My father was Rambo in reality. Nothing was ever settled verbally.”

Stallone

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