Sylvester Stallone: Why Being Prepared Changes Everything

When Sylvester Stallone had nothing, he was living in a flophouse with prostitutes and drug addicts for neighbours, and he had a motto:

Yes, he stole it from the Scouts, but it did the job.

He knew that BIG opportunities to break through would be rare. You don’t get lots of them. Smaller ones maybe, but the big ones tend to turn up unannounced and only occasionally.

I remember this myself as an actor, auditioning for Ken Loach for the film My Name Is Joe. That was a big one.

I was ready. I was more than ready, I was firing on all cylinders. I had trained as an actor and continued to train with my old method acting coach, David Bennett, after my initial training to make sure when that opportunity came, I was ready. I kept pushing myself to higher and higher acting standards.

Stallone did the same. He worked harder than everyone around him and eventually when the opportunity came, he was ready.

There is always a cost to this, mentally, physically and financially. There is no getting around that, that’s the way life is. But one thing I know, the cost of not being prepared is way bigger.

If I wasn’t prepared for Ken Loach that day, if I hadn’t been doing the work, constantly practising, refining, recalibrating, that opportunity could well have slipped past. But it didn’t. I got the job with one of the biggest directors in the country.

So, you need to add up the true cost in your mind. The cost of losing out on a major opportunity, letting it slip through your fingers because you were not quite on it, slightly off, not quite as good as the other guy or gal.

Winning roles is done when no one is watching, in the time and effort consistently put in.