Simply Abu Dhabi XXXV

9 3 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I Q: Let's start fromthe beginning of your career, before 'Rocky'. Did you ever doubt you were going tomake it as an actor? I didn't think I was going to make it. I was optimistic, but I realised I had some physical flaws. It's hard for me to speak sometimes because I had an accident when I was born, so one side of my mouth affects my speech. I would try to get jobs in commercials. The director would say, "What are you saying? What language is that?" I knew it was bad when Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "You have an accent!" I said, "I have an accent?" Arnold and I should open up a school for speech lessons. It would be perfect because if we can make it, anybody can make it! Q: What was it like shooting the first 'Rocky' film? I didn't know what I was doing. I just thought I knew. It was an experiment. Like with boxing – I'm not a boxer, but I had to learn. Everyone in the movie worked for free, basically. They worked for no money. There wasn't even a dressing room. We changed in the back of a car. Those clothes that we were wearing are our clothes. I couldn't even afford a dog. I had to go out and find a dog to use in the film. Even after the movie was made, they didn't like it. No, absolutely not. They said, "We're not even going to release it." We had to fight and fight. They said, "Well, maybe we'll put it in a drive-in movie”, which means it would be like 75 cents to see. We finally kept pushing and pushing, because they didn't want me. They did not want me to be an actor. They wanted Burt Reynolds, Ryan O'Neal, Jimmy Caan, Robert Redford. I think they would have taken a kangaroo. Anybody but me. Q: Rising to stardom through the best action films of the decade, were you jealous of other actors who became successful in other movie genres? I knew that I was kind of limited as an actor because of my physical type. You have a certain thing that you can do well. I can do this well, and that guy can do it better, but he can't do what I do. Dustin Hoffman is not playing Rambo and I'm not playing Tootsie. Every time I venture away from it, it hasn’t ended particularly well! Q: Themoment when 'Rocky' won Best Picture, did you feel like Rocky? When I tell you I was a nobody, believe me. The year before, I was parking cars. I've had a hundred bad ideas to every good one, but all it takes is really one good idea, and the failures just make you smarter. A lot of times success makes you dumber, because you think you can't learn anything anymore. Q: What about the Oscar night when you were the favourite for Best Supporting Actor for 'Creed' andMarkRylance won for 'Bridge of Spies'?Do you think the Academy will ever give you an honorary Academy Award for your career? I don't know about that. I had a feeling that's kind of the character Rocky is. He just gets close, but he doesn't win all the time, but he keeps trying, he keeps punching. The thing is, it's more important that a film wins rather than an individual, because I really love the idea of actors in competition, but I still to this day don't understand how you can compete unless you have five actors playing the same part. When you have five different films, five different theories, five different themes, what's better? Q: Six years after filming the first versionof Rambo, did you thinkhewouldbecome such a superhero in the US? It had nothing to do with politics for me. I just thought, "This is a great story." In the original book, Rambo is so damaged that he is almost a savage, and I thought, "That's not the message. If I'm going to make this movie, I have to be responsible." So, at the very end, he expresses his angst, his loneliness, his mental situation, and the audience can now relate to it. If you notice in every Rambo film, he never goes home. In the new one, he does come home, but in a way, he never arrives. He realises as soon as he walks outside his door, he has no more control. The world now controls you, you don't control the world, and he's not ready for that.