Sylvester Stallone reveals why he thought ‘Rocky’ Oscar win was ‘a joke’

Sylvester Stallone opened up a rather different reaction when his film, Rocky won the Oscar for Best Picture.

In a conversation with Tracy Smith for CBS Sunday Morning at 92NY, Stallone reflected on the moment he learned Rocky won the top award at the 1997 ceremony, beating out “tough competition” like Taxi Driver, Network and All the President’s Men.

“I’m sitting there, I go, ‘There’s no way we’re gonna win,’” he said. “I even had people, believe it or not, other competitive writers, come up to me and go, ‘You’re not gonna win.’ Flat out.”

So, when Jack Nicholson said “those five little words: And the winner is Rocky” Stallone admitted that he thought, “Come on. This is a joke.”

“I’m hearing things. What’s that buzzing sound?” he remembered thinking as the audience erupted into applause.

“And then the applause went and…I wanted to like sink into the seat. And I really did,” he said at the event on September 28.

“It wasn’t as though I felt elation. I actually felt sad a little bit, because I wanted it to be a festive thing, family thing... like, ‘Okay! We arrived.’ And it was like, ‘Nah.’“

“Then I caught on, then I realized that the only love I’m ever gonna really feel at that point in my life is the love of people that are in the dark. You know what I mean?” he added.

Stallone wrote and starred in the 1976 hit Rocky, which received 10 Academy Award nominations and won three.

However, his family, most notably his parents, decided not to attend the Oscars ceremony with him.

In a December 2025 interview with Gayle King for CBS Mornings, Stallone admitted that he will never come to terms with the fact that his parents skipped the big night.

“It’s a volcanic moment, and then it was very sad,” Sylvester Stallone admitted at that time. “You want people that you love that denied you; now you’re here, you’re at the Oscars, and they don’t want to go...You realize that, at that moment, that you’re never ever going to come to terms with this...”