Sylvester Stallone reveals decades-long battle with anxiety, recalls first attack at 36

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Sylvester Stallone opened up about his anxiety attacks and the recurring anxiety he has experienced over the decades.

During an interview, the 'Rambo' actor recalled how his diagnosis continues to affect his life. He also shared details about suffering his first anxiety attack at the age of 36 and how he managed to get through it.

Although Stallone rarely discusses his personal life, he opened up about his struggles during the interview. “Everything is held together with baling wire,” he shared, “but I still want to stay in good shape.”

Sylvester Stallone details decades-long anxiety struggles

During an interview with The New York Times, Stallone said he suffered his first anxiety attack while watching daily footage from a film project in his mid-30s.

He said, “The first time was when I was 36, and I was watching dailies, and then all of a sudden I stood up, and the hair on my neck went up, and I started getting hot, and I go, I’m dying, this is it, I’m on my way out. And bang, down I went. Took a knee, crawled, rolled over, and now I’m in this dark movie theater.”

He shared that the first attack was just the beginning, as he suffered such episodes “again and again and again.” He added that the attacks came out of nowhere and that he still deals with them at times as he gets older.

He said, “When I’m in a crowd, I’d be with my wife at an art exhibition and the room is filling up. It’s getting more and more, and then I’d go, 'I'm going down,' and she’d be like, 'Let’s get out of here.' And literally I just make it to the alley, boom, get down on one knee.”

Sylvester Stallone reveals pressures of fame and body image

The 'Rocky' star detailed his relationship with his body image during the interview. He shared how he struggled with his physique during the height of his career in the 1980s.

“I started to think: Design your body like a jaguar, a cat. Not big like Arnold (Schwarzenegger), but more feral and aggressive and very limber and athletic,” Stallone told The New York Times.

The actor shared, “It became an obsession. Really bad. It got to the point where I became bulimic.” “I got down to 2.6 percent body fat when I was doing Rocky III,” he continued, referring to the 1982 drama.

“I couldn’t hold anything down. Or I didn’t want to keep it down because I became so obsessed with staying at that point of fitness, literally an obsessive body-worship kind of thing.”

“I don’t care what they say,” Stallone explained. “It isn’t as though you’re a junkie, but if you’re going to work out and try to stay in shape for six months straight, and you’re eating yogurt and pudding, it’s not happening.”