The Sylvester Stallone-Richard Gere feud has been Hollywood lore for decades, but Stallone is now filling in some of the details and giving fans a much closer look at how it all started.
© GettyIn his new memoir, The Steps, the 80-year-old actor revisits his complicated history with Gere, revealing that the tension between the two stars began during auditions for the 1974 film The Lords of Flatbush, which followed a group of Brooklyn teenagers in the 1950s.
Stallone and Gere were both young actors trying to establish themselves when they were cast in The Lords of Flatbush.
During an audition improvisation, Stallone said Gere grabbed his T-shirt hard enough that his fingernails dug into his skin. "I told him to back off, but he did it again on the second take,” Stallone wrote. "He couldn’t have known, but Gere had begun to stir the emotional cauldron inside me."
© United ArchivesStallone then asked director Stephen F. Verona if he could react during the scene the way he would in real life - which was to knock their teeth out. Verona's response, according to Stallone, was simple: “Please don’t.”
Things reportedly got even worse once filming began. During a lunch break while the cast was shooting around Coney Island, Stallone and Gere were sitting in the back of a Toyota because it was cold outside.
© NBCGere had chicken wrapped in foil, and Stallone said he warned him that the grease could spill, and it did. According to Stallone, grease ran onto his leg, and he reacted by elbowing Gere across the chest, getting out of the car and confronting him.
“I elbowed him across the chest, got out of the car, came around to his side, and pulled him out of the back seat,” Stallone recalled. Gere allegedly told him, “Hey, man, I don’t want to get physical.” Stallone responded, “Too late.”
The confrontation became serious enough that Verona had to physically position himself between the two actors. “It was clear to everyone that this wasn’t working,” Stallone wrote. “One of us had to go.”
© Sunset BoulevardGere was then replaced by Perry King, while Robert De Niro also exited the project for another role and was replaced by Henry Winkler.
Then Princess Diana entered the picture
© GettyYears after The Lords of Flatbush, Stallone and Gere found themselves in the same room again at a dinner party hosted by Elton John. John recounted the bizarre evening in his 2019 memoir, Me.
As noted by Page Six, the dinner, held in the 1990s, included Princess Diana, Gere, Stallone and several other high-profile guests. At the time, Diana was separated from then-Prince Charles, while Gere's marriage to Cindy Crawford had ended.
According to John, Diana and Gere quickly began talking by the fireplace, and John said it was obvious that Diana was captivated by the actor.
Stallone, meanwhile, was apparently not thrilled. John wrote that the looks Stallone was giving the pair made it clear that Gere and Diana's connection “was not going down well” with him. Things escalated when dinner was served. While the rest of the guests headed to the dining room, Stallone and Gere were nowhere to be found.
© MirrorpixJohn's husband, David Furnish, went looking for them and discovered the two actors in the hallway “squaring up to each other,” apparently preparing to settle their differences over Diana with a fistfight.
No fight broke out, and Stallone ultimately left the party, while Gere returned to Diana by the fireplace. John later recalled Stallone allegedly saying, “I never would have come if I'd known Prince Charming was gonna be here,” before adding, “If I'd wanted her, I would've taken her!”
Stallone has previously denied John's version, reportedly calling the story “a complete fabrication.”
