10 Films That Saved Directors From 'Movie Jail'

In many ways Sylvester Stallone is Rocky Balboa. He has suffered as many tremendous highs and agonising lows as the beloved underdog boxer but, in the oft-quoted words of Rocky himself, "it ain't about how hard you hit... it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward". And this is very much Stallone’s attitude.

The story of the first Rocky film being made is an incredible show of resilience, as a skint Stallone managed to persuade a highly sceptical studio to let him star in his semi-autobiographical script, a story of a down on his luck working class Italian-American looking for a break. After this breakthrough, Stallone's career enjoyed a turbulent few decades, from the box office success of the Rambo movies to the critical annihilations he regularly received, including a rare 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes for Staying Alive.

While most of Stallone's films have managed to alienate critics, with a few exceptions, it was when his box office returns begun to dry up in the late '90s that he decided to take a three-year break from films.

The decision to return to the Rocky franchise with 2006's Rocky Balboa managed to revitalise his career and, alongside the later Creed films, successfully remind people why they fell in love with the Italian Stallion in the first place.