Sylvester Stallone is retiring from playing the famous war hero Rambo. The 69-year-old actor tells Variety that he doesn't plan to ever reprise the role, which he first took on in 1982 with First Blood.
"The heart's willing, but the body says, 'Stay home!,'" Stallone told the Hollywood news site. "It's like fighters that go back for one last round and get clobbered. Leave it to someone else."
The last time Stallone played Rambo was in 2008's Rambo, a movie that the actor said he's proud of.
"You know when you realize there's nothing more to pull out?' Stallone said. "As an action film, I was very satisfied that it dealt with the Burmese situation. It had one foot in a current event, the longest civil war in history, 65 years at that time. It was so brutal, which civil war is, I was shocked they even gave me an R-rating. I didn't want to compromise. I said, 'This is probably going to be the last decent film of this genre that I'm going to do as a solo act.' When that was accomplished, I never felt the same willingness to do it again."
Stallone added that he was asked to play Rambo again for another project, possibly the rumored Rambo: Last Blood, but he declined.
"There's nothing left. When they asked me to do another Rambo, I said, 'If I can't do better than I did last time, and I can't, then why?'"
In December, it was reported that Stallone would be working as a producer on Fox's upcoming Rambo TV show. However, Variety reports that he's not involved, in part because he's not thrilled with the show's father-son dynamic. The TV program will focus on the relationship between Rambo and his Navy SEAL son.
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