Sylvester Stallone and Jennifer Flavin have just celebrated their twenty-five years of marriage, but he is filing for divorce. A real disaster movie.
“I have a story to tell you that I have never told, but which shows how you can deal with adversity. This August 23, on Instagram, Sylvester Stallone shows his fans the pair of white baskets he treasures in his dressing room. He portrayed them on the set of “Rocky Balboa”, in 2006. The left shoe is gaping. She was severed with a cutter to free his foot after a scene in the ring during which he broke two toes. Moral of the story: “When you suffer, it’s sometimes a good sign; it’s when everything is too easy, in general, that we end up doing mediocre things”, he concludes, enigmatic.
Read also : In 1994, Stallone discovers that he is not the father of her baby
It is only the next day that we will understand the true meaning of this “morality”: an American magazine reveals that Jennifer Flavin files for divorce . The official request was filed on August 19 in a courthouse in Palm Beach, Florida, where the couple lives after before two years. Jennifer is represented by two lawyers. Sly doesn’t even have one. At 76, Rocky is on the mat. And he suffers.
This time, he did not really see it coming. On July 30, the Stallones still celebrated the birthday of Frank, the younger brother, in Los Angeles. The whole clan was sei, smiling… These months, Sly was filming a reality TV series about his family life: nine episodes were already in the box, there was only a tenth left to make. After nearly three decades, Sly and Jennifer passed for a united couple, “Italian”, fusion, with its ups, its downs and its rants. Sixtine and Sophia, two of the three daughters Jennifer gave her, had created a podcast, “Unwaxed”, where they revealed the secrets of their family life.
With the women in his life, Jennifer, Sistine (14), Scarlet (10) and Sophia (16). In 2012.
© Sebastien Micke / Paris Match
“You’re lucky to have a dad like him,” Jennifer read in April 2021. According to her, Sly was a husband who didn’t understand himself on the show. He was, on a daily basis, “to die of laughter”. Humor would even have been the cement of their relationship… “We both love being stupid”, she trusts. Sylvester is said to be equally fulfilled. His wife was “fantastic, sometimes a little on, but in a good way”. “If he left me, he said, it would be collective suicide for me, because I have multiple personalities. »
So what happened? When Sly met Jennifer in 1988, he was already an international star. Aged 42, he had all the women he wanted, and there are many. He refers to the pain of his stormy divorce from the volcanic Brigitte Nielsen, his second wife, to whom he was married for a year and a half. Jennifer is the opposite: she moves him with her gentleness and her vulnerability. “It looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a car,” he would say later.
Jennifer did not see herself growing old alone with an intrusive, whimsical Stallone
At 19, he manages a difficult childhood. Born in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles, the sixth in a family of seven children, she lost her father, a post office worker, at the age of 11. Sharing the room with her two sisters, she has done away with babysitting to have enough to eat: Shirley, her mother, who had never worked before the heart attack that a son carried off as a husband, became an alcoholic. Harassed by her classmates, Jennifer landed the unenviable title of “most naive girl” in high school.
As she is also very pretty, she became a model: a single photo shoot is enough to pay her rent. And that’s how she meets Michael, a manager who took care of her for a photo shoot. He also knows Sly, with whom he offers him dinner at the restaurant. She who has never set foot in Hollywood obviously accepts the invitation more, out of caution, asked a friend, Kirstin, to accompany her. And here she is at Rocky’s table, in the middle of other girls just as pretty as her.
The 1000 m2 villa in Los Angeles that the artist offers in March for 18.2 million dollars
© AGENCY / BESTIMAGE
To go dancing, Stallone offers them to get into his limo; she is the only one to decline, preferring to follow him in his ramshackle Dodge. I like. Once at the club, he invites her to sit at a table, face to face, provokes the jealousy of a rival. That evening, Jennifer returns home accompanied by her friend Kirstin. The first meeting will take place a little later, during a horseback ride. Rocky already knows that she is the woman of his life. It takes her six months to think the same thing… The fairy tale begins.
She accuses him of squandering their fortune and wants the Palm Beach property
Living with a superstar has its perks: The couple move into Sly’s $8 million home in Benedict Canyon. On weekends, they escape to his villa in Malibu. Their personalities match perfectly. Always punctual, even ahead of time, she defines herself as a “type A personality”, that is to say ultra-organized – a habit she inherits from her childhood, whereas “he is quite the opposite “”. She doesn’t drink, smoke or take drugs, prepares his breakfasts with his favorite cookies and reminds him of his appointments, which he tends to forget. She begins to think baby and sweeps away the recurring rumors of infidelity. “It was declared in 1992. More, week after week, about spending five days out of seven together: how would he find the time to cheat on me? »
Jennifer’s face is still tattooed on her right shoulder. Zach Perez (right) is in charge of covering it.
©DR
His world collapsed when, on March 14, 1994, a Federal Express postman rang at his door: he brought him a six-page letter signed by Sylvester Stallone, telling him… that it was over between them. A few days later, his agent reveals to him the affair of the star with a photographer and model, Janice Dickinson, who has just given birth to a baby whom he believes to be the father. When a paternity test proves that the child was from someone else, he will immediately break off to embark on a fresia of conquests. He then got engaged to another top model, Angie Everhart, to return in the summer of 1995 to Jennifer, who was just waiting for that. Reconciliation, birth of a young woman, Sophia, in 1996, wedding in 1997, with great fanfare, in a London chapel, followed by a party at Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill’s birthplace…
The metamorphosis: Butkus replaced Jennifer… The photo is posted on Instagram on August 16.
©DR
Two more daughters are born. Surrounded by her women, Sly felt happy and peaceful. Jennifer juggles between the professional professions of the businesswoman: founder of a cosmetics brand, she does teleshopping and spends up to seven hours a day on the air while assuming her responsibilities as a mother, obsessed with idea of giving her three daughters the childhood she was deprived of. In mid-May, the couple celebrated their silver wedding anniversary on Instagram: “Our marriage just keeps getting better,” wrote Jennifer. I love you so ! We will spend together in the next twenty-five years…”. A message disappears afterwards. It was three months ago, in other words an eternity.
Behind these fiery declarations, in reality, hides a malaise. In her divorce petition, where she indicates that she wants her maiden name back, Jennifer accuses Sly of squandering the family fortune. The Stallones recently moved to Palm Beach, where he has ties. Was it the sale of the Los Angeles house that set things on fire? This one, put at a price of 110 million dollars, was finally acquired 58 million for the singer Adele, a certain exorbitant price more considered derisory for the experts of luxury real estate, taking into account the surface and the splendor of the places of splendour.
In the past, he cheated on her with models. Today he fell in love with a rottweiler
Stallone, whose fortune is attributed to 400 million dollars, has never been very sharing. Jennifer affirmed last year that after always, in her couple, “everyone lives their life financially and pays their taxes on their side”. She swore then that she was “not going to start asking him for money now”. She is now claiming the exclusive property of Palm Beach, a tropical jewel valued at 35 million dollars which she has just decorated.
What made him change his mind? The girls have grown up, and Jennifer, who admits to being “terrified” by the empty nest syndrome, would not see herself living alone with an aging, intrusive and, hatching, increasingly prey to Rocky Rocky. In the past, he cheated on her with models. Today, he fell in love with a Rottweiler he named Dwight, in honor of the character he plays in “Tulsa King”, the series he is filming. She didn’t want it at any price. I passed another. He loves dogs so much that he actually got a tattoo of Butkus’s head – his trusty bullmastiff from the Rocky years – on his shoulder, where his wife’s once was.
On August 10, lying on his bed, curled up in white sheets, Stallone appeared on Instagram with Dwight by his side, the Rottweiler of discord. “You know, it’s nice to be able to sleep with someone who doesn’t snore, who doesn’t move and who doesn’t lose their hair too much,” he laughs at his joke. Nice way to announce that the time of the fairy tale was already over.
