Fifty years ago, cinema history was made with the release of Rocky, a film about a Philadelphia underdog that captured the hearts of audiences worldwide. Today, the legacy of that iconic franchise remains so potent that thousands of visitors continue to race up the 72 steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art annually to pay homage to the fictional pugilist. Now, a new film is detailing the real-life struggle of its creator, featuring 27-year-old New Yorker Anthony Ippolito in the role of a lifetime. Cinema’s greatest underdog story hit the screen, a tale about a Philadelphia ham-and-egger who takes the world heavyweight boxing champ all the way to the final bell, losing the fight on a judge’s decision but winning the hearts of a nation, f ifty years ago this December. Half a century on, Rocky’s punching power – its unerring ability to make heroes out of zeroes – has faded, think again, if you thought. Through grit, persistence and a never-ending stream of unsolicited audition tapes, bags the role of a lifetime and propels himself into the Oscar running, alongside the likes of Tom Cruise, Matt Damon and John Malkovich, this one is about a 27-year-old New Yorker who. It’s a lot of money,” he laughs “I don’t want to make myself sound spineless, would Ippolito have gone to such extremes? “I don’t know. You can feel this great depth and intensity.”. Seat-of-its-pants production of the original film, which couldn’t go a day over for risk of its studio shutting the whole thing down: scenes are rattled off in single, frenzied takes; Stallone limps through filming with a strained leg tendon, then a broken hand from punching a frozen side of beef in the film’s famous meat-locker scene; at one point, cast and crew have, farrelly has great fun in depicting the scrappy. To squeeze into a walk-in freezer with their equipment to hide from a union rep threatening to take their filming permit away.
Ippolito’s journey to landing the lead in I Play Rocky was defined by persistence.
He spent years targeting the role before a script was even finalized, repeatedly sending unsolicited audition tapes into the void. It was a discouraging process, particularly as major industry names like Jacob Elordi, Timothée Chalamet, and David Corenswet were rumored to be in contention for the part. Ippolito recalls how those around him urged him not to get his hopes up, noting that Hollywood often favors established stars. Despite the uncertainty, director Peter Farrelly confirmed that Ippolito was the very first person the production team considered, and after seeing his performance, they felt no need to audition anyone else. And once they saw him there was no point in auditioning anyone else. Cops or thugs, what serious roles he did get tended to be bit parts as tough guys.
The film explores a challenging period in Stallone’s life, documenting his time working as a fishmonger and his appearance in an adult film to make ends meet. According to Ippolito, the movie depicts a dark and lonely era during which Stallone faced constant disparagement regarding his physical appearance and his slurred speech. Ippolito emphasizes the incongruence of that time, noting that people often misjudged Stallone’s intelligence because of his appearance and speech patterns, which were actually the result of a forceps injury at birth.
Achieving the physical presence of the iconic star required a complete lifestyle shift for Ippolito, involving a rigorous bulking-up regime and a heavy protein intake. While his natural features are softer, his performance undergoes a total shift the moment the camera rolls, dropping his voice an octave and adopting Stallone’s signature loping shuffle and facial expressions. The portrayal has been so precise that Stallone himself reached out to offer his approval, which Ippolito found incredibly moving, viewing the film as a love letter to the struggles Stallone overcame. Granted, he doesn’t look dissimilar to Rocky-era Stallone – the square jaw and mop of dark hair are present and correct – but his features are softer, more boyband, and his voice is noticeably higher than Stallone’s bassy drawl. His chin juts, his shoulders seem to grow rounder and he starts to move in that loping shuffle, his eyes droop. Burt Young [his Rocky co-star] called him ‘an orphan in life’ with ‘a big fire burning and no place to put it’. I Play Rocky doesn’t seem terribly preoccupied with these roiling internal dynamics – though that isn’t to its detriment.
A centerpiece of the narrative is the legendary pressure Stallone faced to relinquish his own script. Producers famously offered him $300,000—a sum equivalent to nearly $2 million today—to step aside and let someone else star in the lead role. Stallone adamantly refused to sell his vision, an act of naivety or pure conviction that defined the film’s production. Ippolito jokes that while it is hard not to admire such a massive payout, the integrity Stallone displayed is exactly what makes the story so remarkable. It’s not easy to discern immediately what made those producers so convinced of his Sly-ness, speaking to Ippolito by video call from a hotel room in Rome. But Stallone had a remarkable raw talent hidden under the surface. “There’s this incongruence,” Ippolito says. “People would mistake him for being, um, maybe not smart – just a strong, burly guy with this slur.
Ippolito’s own path to acting was unconventional. As a child, he was a talented baseball pitcher capable of throwing at 40 miles per hour, earning him an appearance on the show Ripley’s Believe it or Not!. He played the sport at a high level into his college years, which he credits for teaching him the resilience needed for a career in acting, noting that both fields involve a significant amount of failure. As Ippolito played Pacino in another making-of project, The Offer, a TV series about the protracted creation of The Godfather, you’d be more likely to compare him to a young Al Pacino – fitting.
As he enters the spotlight, Ippolito is navigating the pressures of the industry, including recent encounters with established stars like Andrew Garfield. With his performance already generating buzz for a potential best actor nomination during awards season, Ippolito faces the prospect of competing against industry titans he has admired for two decades. The project serves not just as a biopic, but as a testament to the persistence required to succeed in Hollywood, mirroring the very grit displayed by the character that made Stallone a legend. He then went one further than the character he was playing by earning the top prize: a best picture Oscar.
