Sylvester Stallone Broke His Neck on Set

What happened during filming?

Stallone was directing and starring in The Expendables, the all-action ensemble film that brought together a roster of screen fighters including Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steve Austin.

During one of the movie’s intense fight sequences, Stallone was slammed hard enough to fracture his neck. He later said the scene with Austin was so physical that the injury was not something he could simply walk off, Stallone had built his career on characters who would shrug off that kind of punishment. This time, he couldn’t.

In an earlier interview, Stallone said: “My fight with Stone Cold Steve Austin was so vicious that I ended up getting a hairline fracture in my neck.”

He added that he needed “a very serious operation” afterward and ended up with a metal plate in his neck.

The injury led to years of surgery

The damage did not stop with one procedure. Stallone has since said the injury continued to affect him long after the film wrapped.

On the Paramount+ reality series The Family Stallone, the actor opened up about undergoing more treatment, with the show following him before another operation. According to the family, the procedure was his seventh surgery connected to the physical toll of the injury.

Stallone admitted he had pushed himself too far while making the film, saying he was doing repeated takes and did not fully recover from the first Expendables movie.

His wife, Jennifer Flavin, also spoke about the strain the surgeries have put on the family, noting that Stallone’s habit of doing his own stunts had consequences that lasted well beyond the set.

Why Stallone kept doing his own stunts

Stallone’s career has always been tied to physical performance. From Rocky to Rambo, audiences have watched him take punishment on screen for nearly 50 years. That dedication helped define his appeal, but it also came with a cost.

The actor has often spoken about wanting the action to feel real, particularly in films built around hand-to-hand fights and practical stunt work. For viewers, that commitment can make a scene more convincing. For the person being thrown around, less fun.

In Stallone’s case, the Expendables injury became one of the starkest examples of the gap between action-movie risk and lasting damage.

The Expendables franchise continued anyway

Despite the injury, Stallone returned for later entries in the franchise. The Expendables 2 arrived in 2012, followed by The Expendables 3 in 2014 and Expend4bles in 2023.

The series remained built around old-school action spectacle, explosions, fights, and a cast of actors with enough action credentials to fill a small museum. But Stallone’s neck injury has become part of the franchise’s off-screen history, and a fairly brutal one at that.

It is a sharp contrast to the easy mythology around action stars. On screen, the hero gets up after the hit. Off screen, sometimes he gets seven surgeries.