‘I Play Rocky’ Star Anthony Ippolito on Becoming Sylvester Stallone and Acting With a Dog: ‘He Wasn’t a Huge Fan of Me’

Anthony Ippolito had to do more than nail Sylvester Stallone’s signature voice to play him in “I Play Rocky.”

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He also had to transform his skinny physique to one with bulging muscles.

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“It had its moments for sure. I was being tested,” Ippolito told me Saturday at the AFI Fest “I Play Rocky” screening in Los Angeles. “It’s like a consistency thing, though. I had a great deal of time, so just an entire lifestyle shift and it was just one of the priorities of every day for a pretty long period.”

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Met and interviewed ‘I Play Rocky’ star Anthony Ippolito for the first time today. We talked about the muscles he put on to transform into Sylvester Stallone and acting opposite a dog playing Butkus.https://t.co/rd2mkN8lBD via @variety #justforvariety pic.twitter.com/yCnvV4IWM9

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As Ippolito previously told Variety’s Clayton Davis, he spent nearly two years bulking up from about 150 pounds to roughly 180 while training at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn.

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“It happened over time, but a couple of people were like, ‘What’s going on?’” Ippolito recalled. “They didn’t necessarily know I was doing the prep, and they were like, ‘What’s going on here?’ I was like, ‘I’ve been going to the gym…

Original source: https://variety.com/v/tv/

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