Anthony Ippolito Gained 40 Pounds to Play Sylvester Stallone

If Anthony Ippolito were born to play one role, Sylvester Stallone would be it. He’s a near doppelganger of the Italian Stallion, which makes his turn as a young Sly in the film I Play Rocky even more compelling. The biopic, which traces Stallone’s struggles to get the 1976 film Rocky made, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday and it’s already in talks to be an Oscars contender. But if his name and face seem familiar, it’s probably because he also starred as a young Al Pacino in the Paramount+ series The Offer about the making of The Godfather.The privilege to play not one but two household names who had their come-up during the New Hollywood era is not lost on Ippolito. In an exclusive interview with GQ, Ippolito says he’s been “spoiled” by the opportunities to play two of the biggest film stars in history. The spotlight has also put him on Dior’s radar. The French luxury fashion house dressed and groomed the actor for I Play Rocky’s premiere this weekend.Below, Ippolito tells us about meeting Stallone, the fanfare surrounding I Play Rocky, and exactly how he got into boxing shape.Courtesy of David Pike for Christian Dior ParfumsCongrats on all the positive reception on your performance. How’s that feel?It feels great. I’m really thankful that people are enjoying the movie. It’s really cool to have people start to see it now.Have you gotten a chance to watch it with other people?Yeah, I was in that first screening with [director] Pete [Farrelly] and some of the rest of the cast, and it was really incredible hearing the response, hearing the audience react to the cool moments in there.What did you understand about Stallone when you finally met him that you couldn't have gotten from just studying footage of him?Just hearing his firsthand account, one-on-one of what it was like for him walking in those rooms with the producers for those negotiations and hearing him talk about everything he was going through at the time and how difficult it was for him to turn down those increasingly large sums of money in exchange for the rights of the script.Very few people will know what that’s like.Yeah, exactly. And hearing him explain how the facial paralysis affected his upbringing and his childhood and high school and it made him feel a bit more isolated as well.Was there anything else that he said that maybe changed the way that you had originally understood him as a human?I was just really taken back by his intelligence and it really stuck out to me. I mean, I knew he was a very smart man from looking into him, but then being able to really speak to him directly, I was really just really impressed and inspired.Was there anything that you didn’t want to imitate about him when you were taking on this role?It’s important to realize that he has one of the most recognizable voices and physiques in film history. So that's one thing, but also that he’s a person and that the voice was partially the result of the facial paralysis and just understanding it from an acting perspective, looking at it as a character: how that made him an underdog in his own life. Looking at it from a very grounded perspective as opposed to some outside physical or satirical perspective.Courtesy of David Pike for Christian Dior ParfumsThere’s a fine line between doing an impersonation without looking too much like a caricature, right?Yeah. And it’s important to think about the private moments and also use this as an opportunity to take certain liberties because there are moments where he's with his wife Sasha in the film and we don’t have exact cinematic creations of what their dynamic was like. So you just have to be willing to go out on a limb a bit.At this point now you’ve played Al Pacino and Sly at moments in their lives before they become famous. Do you ever think you're becoming cast for these people because people see the same drive within you?Well, that’s a flattering sentiment. I’m not sure. I don’t know. I feel very fortunate and a bit spoiled and very, very grateful that the people behind these projects are willing to trust me with these stories and with these roles because they’re really incredible. And between those two projects, the amount of people that have been impacted by these actors and by the characters that they played—it’s a pretty large group of people. So it’s a big responsibility, but I’m just kind of flattered and happy to do it the best I can.So what are the chances there’s going to be a Sylvester Stallone cinematic universe and there’s going to be a movie about the making of The Expendables?I don’t know, but I think if they’re going to do that, I’m pretty sure they'd have to either cast somebody else or wait a decent amount of time for me to get a little older or use some sort of prosthetic makeup technology.Over the years, Stallone’s played these very physically powerful characters, but obviously the person that we’re going to see in I Play Rocky is vulnerable and struggling. Which version of masculinity do you find more interesting to play with?Well, I really think what Stallone did when he penned the script and he created the character of Rocky was really interesting. He was a bit of a maverick in the sense that he pulled from Terry Malloy—Marlon Brando’s performance from On the Waterfront in terms of looking at a boxer and masculinity. But through Adrian, he unlocks a certain sensitivity and a certain tenderness and vulnerability that really shapes the character and gives it a very multidimensional portrait of masculinity. So I really, really admire what he did with thatI’m also very curious about your workout routine for this. I know it took you a year and a half to train. What was that like?Yeah. Between a year and a half to two years. It was just a really arduous process. In the beginning, it was just me. Then they brought on two wonderful trainers, Grant Roberts and Kirk Myers, through the last five months of the process. But prior to that, it was kind of just me trying to eat the amount that I needed to eat, get in those macros, and really try to put size on to get that shape and that silhouette of the man that a lot of people, a lot of the fans of the franchise have come to know. And especially in the first movie, he wasn’t exactly the way he looked in some of the later ones, but he still had a very specific kind of thick physique that I certainly didn't have at the very beginning of this process. So I kind of knew I had my work cut out for me.Courtesy of David Pike for Christian Dior ParfumsWhat was your split like?Oh, that’s a good question. I mean, I messed around with all different stuff. I don’t know what I did when, in terms of push-pull days, but it was mostly five days a week during the main bulking phase. I gained a considerable amount of weight. And then when we got closer to the shooting of the thing, we started to do two-a-days. I added some boxing and cardio, and that helped me shed some of the fat that came on. I wasn’t trying to shed all of it because like I said, I needed a fuller physique. We were trying to match Sly’s body as closely as we could. But me and Peter Farrelly spoke at length about this. Then once we added the boxing in, I ended up shedding a little bit of the fat and really starting to take the shape.At your heaviest, how much do you think you put on?Oh man, it’s hard to say. And it wasn’t all muscle, but somewhere around 40 pounds. It’s hard to encapsulate it, but it was a day in, day out thing. It was a lifestyle shift and it was a priority in my life for a great deal of time.Courtesy of David Pike for Christian Dior ParfumsI mean, you played baseball for Baruch College and surely the training for that must not have been as intense.No, no, it wasn’t. I mean, I had some training experience from baseball, but you don’t need a certain type of physique necessarily for that sport. But for this, it was definitely different. It definitely tested me in more ways than one.What's your relationship with Dior Sauvage?I first discovered it when I was a bit younger in a mall in my hometown and I was like, “Man, this is a great scent.”How have your grooming habits changed over the years? I know you’re still fairly young.I've had some makeup artists on some of these projects suggest I moisturize often. So I said, “Okay, I'll try to focus on that.”Don’t forget your sunscreen, dude.And that. I can't believe I left out sunscreen. Yes, yes. Absolutely.You’ve spent so much time transforming your body and appearance to play these other people. What’s it take for you to feel like yourself again?In this instance, shedding some of that weight because I really couldn’t—and didn't really want to—continue eating like that. You start to see a little bit more of yourself in the mirror and just once you pour so much of yourself into the thing, when it’s over, there's a bit of a grieving process I’d say, but you leave it behind and it kind of fades a bit.