Milo Ventimiglia Explains Why Everyone Thinks He’s Sylvester Stallone’s Son
Milo Ventimiglia and Sylvester Stallone resemble each other somewhat, but a crooked mouth isn’t all they have in common. It turns out the two actors go way back.
Questions about whether Ventimiglia and Stallone are related have followed the two actors for years. Collaborating on multiple projects only added to the curiosity.
How Ventimiglia and Stallone met
Are Milo Ventimiglia and Sylvester Stallone related? On-screen, yes, but not in real life. Ventimiglia plays Stallone’s son in the 2006 movie Rocky Balboa, which revived the series about the boxer who improbably rose to fame by losing a big match.
Rocky continued on for 14 years with four increasingly silly and/or inferior sequels. After Rocky V disappointed at the box office, the series lay dormant for 16 years, until the release of Rocky Balboa in 2006. That movie surprised viewers by taking the series back to its roots, and that’s the one where Ventimiglia played Rocky’s son, Robert, as an adult.
Ventimiglia reprised his role as Rocky in a cameo in Creed II.
The physical similarity Stallone and Ventimiglia share
One reason that people may think that Stallone and Ventimiglia are related is that both speak with a bit of a slur because of a crooked mouth. However, they have it for different reasons.
Ventimiglia’s came about because he was born with dead nerves in his lower lip, causing an asymmetry. In Stallone’s case, his lip was pulled with forceps when he was born, which severed his nerves.
Ventimiglia said of Stallone, “I remember him telling me, ‘Make sure you’re mouth is warmed up because it’s cold out.’ You should see the two of us when we’re filming in Philly standing in front of heat lamps just moving our mouths,” Ventimiglia told MovieWeb. “Which was nice because we got to bond on that. If it’s below 32 degrees we’re f***ed! Our face freezes up. He had a lot of great advice.”
How Milo Ventimiglia got Sylvester Stallone on ‘This Is Us’
On This Is Us, Ventimiglia plays Jack, whose son Kevin goes off to film a movie years after Jack has died. The show wanted to cast Stallone as the star of the movie and put the question to Ventimiglia, as he explained on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
The producers asked the actor “Do you think he’d do it?” Ventimiglia replied he didn’t know.
“And then they just stared at me,” Ventimiglia said. That pregnant pause could only mean one thing.
“Oh, you want me to call him. OK. I’ll put on my producer hat and I’ll call him,” Ventimiglia said. Stallone liked the idea but asked to see the script first. Once he did, Stallone sent back “the coolest email,” Ventimiglia said, with a standout quote:
“This sounds very worthwhile, and dare I say it, intriguing.”
Stallone did indeed appear on This Is Us, delivering a heartfelt message to Kevin. When he tells Kevin his father would be proud of him, Kevin looks visibly uncomfortable remembering his father’s death, saying it was a long time ago.
Stallone responds, “In my experience, Kevin, there’s no such thing as a long time ago. There’s only the memories that mean something and the memories that don’t.”
