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It ain’t about how hard Sylvester Stallone almost hit Richard Gere, it’s about how they kept moving forward.
More than 50 years after the actors auditioned for 1974’s The Lords of Flatbushâwhere Stallone also met Robert De Niroâthe Rocky actor recounted a physical altercation with Gere that led to a longstanding feud.
“I remember everything went pretty well initially with me and De Niro,” Stallone wrote in his new memoir The Steps, per Entertainment Weekly. “We were trying to outtalk each other. I enjoyed improvisation and the process of ad-libbing.”
“Then the improvs with Richard Gere went bad, when Gere grabbed my T-shirt and his fingernails dug into my skin,” he recalled. “I told him to back off, but he did it again on the second take.”
Though Gere had “begun to stir the emotional cauldron inside” him, Stallone conceded that the actor couldn’t have known his reaction.Â
He ultimately asked co-director Stephen Verona for permission to take their back-and-forth a step further.
“I turned to Stephen Verona and asked him, ‘Is it okay if I ad-lib here and react the way I would actually react if someone did that to me in real life?'” Stallone explained, with Verona asking what he would do. “‘Do? I’d knock his teeth out.'”
Although the Rambo star didn’t escalate the altercation at the director’s request, their tension subsequently hit a breaking point when Gere accidentally spilled his lunch on him.Â
“A stream of chicken grease spilled off the foil paper onto my leg,” Stallone recalled. “I elbowed him across the chest, got out of the car, came around to his side, and pulled him out of the back seat. ‘Hey, man, I don’t want to get physical,’ Gere said in a thin voice.”
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“‘Too late,'” he responded at the time. âStephen Verona put himself in front of Gere. It was clear to everyone that this wasn’t working. One of us had to go.”
Ultimately, Stallone nabbed the role of Stanley Rosiello in The Lords of Flatbush, which also starred Henry Winkler, though none of his audition partners joined him when cameras started rolling.Â
Perry King went on to play Chico instead of the Pretty Woman starâwho has never publicly addressed his feud with Stalloneâafter Verona pulled him from the project, according to Stallone. Meanwhile, Paul Mace went on to play Wimpyafter De Niro stepped away from the project.
E! News has reached out to Gere’s rep for comment and has not yet heard back.
For more surprising celebrity feuds, keep reading.
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