Before Sylvester Stallone sold the script for Rocky, he was homeless and sold his dog for $50. A week later, he sold the script and bought his dog back for $3,000.

Sylvester was desperately in need of cash in the starting days of his career; so he, with a heavy heart, put his beloved dog for sale.

Stallone says: “I tied my dog up at the store with a sign that asked for a hundred bucks. I got $50 from this guy called Little Jimmy.”

“You get nothing without struggle”.

Sylvester Enzio Stallone was born in New York and attended a school in Philadelphia. He met with a severe accident during birth which permanently hardened his facial nerve, leaving parts of his lip, tongue and chin paralyzed.

This accident during Stallone’s early life left him with no second doors. But his inner strength didn’t let him give up and he channelized the same in writing. He put his heart and soul to pen down the script for Rocky, and as soon as the script was sold, all that happened is narrated in the words of Stallone:

“When I sold the script for Rocky, I went to see Little Jimmy and begged him for giving the dog back. He lined up his children and said, ‘Oh my kids love the dog’. I said, ‘You’ve only had him for a week…’

“Jimmy wanted to fight me and said he was gonna kill me, he was a crazy little person. I couldn’t fight him, they’d arrest me, and so I offered him to pay $3,000.”

And to finally get rid of little Jimmy, he mentioned to the Shortlist magazine:

“I ended up putting him in the movie. Do you remember in Rocky where the little guy goes, ‘Hey, did ya win?’ and I go, ‘What are you, deaf?’ and he goes, ‘No, I’m short.’ That’s him.”

Sylvester’s story very clearly reflects that, “accidents happen with all of us, if you take them as your weakness, you’d never succeed in life and if you make them your strength, there’s nothing in life, which you can’t achieve.”

Reference : http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/films/sylvester-stallone

http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/sylvester-stallone.html