Sylvester Stallone had a real "wake-up call" after being jailed in a "true house of horrors".
The 80-year-old Hollywood star has recalled a time he was arrested in the early 1970s while working at a New York City deli, when he had to tell a man from a waste disposal company that the business was going to start using a new vendor.
In his new memoir The Steps, Stallone wrote that the man "closed the distance and gave me a big-time shove against the counter" and threatened him with a "f****** beatin'".
The Rocky star quickly grabbed a tenderising hammer and "razor-sharp fish knife", but police intervened before things could escalate.
Stallone was arrested "for threatening an ‘unarmed’ man with not one, but two deadly weapons".
While the other man ultimately went free, the actor found himself in the Manhattan House of Detention, which had been given the nickname of "the Tombs".
He wrote: “It was filthy. It was violent, overcrowded. It was a true house of horrors. It was also very familiar."
Stallone revealed he had “spent a week in a place a lot like this, except worse because there were no cops, laws or judges there” at one point in his teens.
This time, he found himself in a cell alongside "at least 15 men", even though the space was "probably designed for six".
He was released after a week and a half, and immediately quit his job at the deli.
The action movie hero reflected: "It was a wake-up call. The thought of having no freedom again was an incentive to keep my nose clean, forever."
By 1976, he had turned things around and became a household name at the age of 30 when Rocky hit the big screen.
Meanwhile, Stallone recently revealed how a terrifying spell in a psychiatric facility as a teenager left him convinced that nobody would ever be able to break his will after claiming he was attacked by another resident during his stay.
The Rambo star told The New York Times teenagers at Pennsylvania’s Devereux Manor High School could be sent to a place he knew as Park Lodge or the “Snake Pit” as punishment for breaking rules, and said he was once kept there for “a couple of weeks”.
Sylvester said: “In my age group, the teenagers, if you ever snuck out to see a girl or do something like that, you’d be reprimanded by being taken to a place called Park Lodge or the Snake Pit.”
He added: “On the outside it looked like a big, old Tudor home from the 1920s, and then you walked inside and you entered the heart of insanity.”
Describing what he remembered seeing inside, he said: “The smell, the filth, people running around naked, clawing, hands tied, drooling. This is what they thought would impress you never to break the rules again.”
Stallone also claimed during his stay he was attacked by another resident.
He added: “It was wild, but this to me, was one of the better things that happened, too. I said, ‘I know they’re going to try to break me’.
“I was attacked there. They tried to rip my groin off.”
Sylvester said the other student was known as Jay Bird.
He said: “He was big, had no hair, always naked, rotten teeth. They called him Jay Bird because he was always naked as a jaybird.
“And I go into the bathroom on the way to the food mess hall, and he comes in and comes around me and he’s like ripping on my throat and he is going into my pants and grabbing my groin.”
He said two guards then intervened, "beating the c*** out of [Jay Bird] with razor straps".
Stallone recalled: “I go, ‘What the hell is wrong with him?’ And they say, ‘You’re in a crazy house, boy. Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s crazy’.”
A representative for Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health told the newspaper it respected his “right to tell his story his own way” and was “sorry for any trauma he remembers experiencing”, without directly addressing his allegations.