Robert Patrick and Sylvester Stallone have reunited as antagonists in the latest season of Tulsa King, which you can watch with a Paramount+ subscription, after first working together in Cop Land almost 30 years ago. It’s clearly great for Patrick, who has long considered Stallone a friend and an inspiration. In a recent interview, the "Terminator Hunk" explained just how important Stallone has been to his career over the years.
It Started Long Before They Met
Patrick’s feelings about Stallone go back long before they met and first worked together on the 1997 drama about corrupt New York cops living in New Jersey. He recently explained just how far in an interview with UPI:
I had such a great time working with Sly on Cop Land, and Sly's a big part of my life as a human being, because Rocky was one of the most inspirational films I ever saw.
Patrick points out how Rocky gave him the sense that anyone can succeed at anything if they put their mind to it:
I was in high school and an athlete. And, really, that film made you realize that if you believed enough in your dreams to go after them, they could come true.
That later translated to Patrick’s career as an actor. In fact, while working on Cop Land, he didn’t shy away from asking Stallone about the movie, and it provided more inspiration:
I said, 'How did you come up with the idea for Rocky?' And when he explained it to me, it was really a metaphor for his acting career that he just wanted a chance. It hit home even harder. So, I had a lot of respect for him.
Rocky is, in so many ways, the ultimate story of the underdog. Not only is the character in the movie the underdog, but Stallone was a Hollywood underdog himself. I don’t need to go into the history of the movie; it’s well-known at this point, but learning that someone as successful and well-thought-of as Robert Patrick is putting that inspiration to good use is, well, inspirational in and of itself.
They say you don’t always want to meet your heroes, but this is obviously a case where that isn’t true. Even now, three decades after first working with Stallone, and well into his wildly successful career, Patrick still has those thoughts about his co-star on Tulsa King, and the respect is mutual, as Stallone praised Patrick in a recent interview with CinemaBlend. We should all strive to have working relationships as great as these two.
