Sylvester Stallone details ‘physical’ altercation with Richard Gere on “The Lords of Flatbush” set

Daysia TolentinoSun, October 4, 2026 at 1:00 PM UTC

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Sylvester Stallone; Richard GereCredit: Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal/Getty; Arnold Jerocki/WireImageKey Points -

Sylvester Stallone is detailing the fight he had with Richard Gere on the set of 1974’s The Lords of Flatbush.

Stallone said that their tension resulted in Gere being taken off the movie.

Stallone shared the story in his memoir The Steps, which is available now wherever books are sold.

Sylvester Stallone is giving insight into the fight that sparked a decades-long feud with Richard Gere.

In his new memoir The Steps, which came out Sept. 29, Stallone recounted the tension he had with Gere on the set of The Lords of Flatbush. He said that their disdain for each other began during the audition process, which is also when he met Robert De Niro.

“I remember everything went pretty well initially with me and De Niro,” Stallone wrote. “We were trying to outtalk each other. I enjoyed improvisation and the process of ad-libbing. Then the improvs with Richard Gere went bad, when Gere grabbed my T-shirt and his fingernails dug into my skin. I told him to back off, but he did it again on the second take. He couldn’t have known, but Gere had begun to stir the emotional cauldron inside me.”

Stallone asked director Stephen Verona if he could react to Gere’s actions realistically — which would have spelled trouble for the American Gigolo star.

“I turned to Stephen Verona and asked him, ‘Is it okay if I ad-lib here and react the way I would actually react if someone did that to me in real life?’” he recalled. “‘What would you do?’ ‘Do? I’d knock his teeth out.’ ‘Please don’t.’”

While he didn’t fight Gere then, the tensions continued to mount. It all came to a head one day while the costars were taking their lunch break. While they were eating in a car parked on set, Gere spilled chicken grease on Stallone after the Rocky star warned him not to make a mess.

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“A stream of chicken grease spilled off the foil paper onto my leg,” Stallone recalled. “I elbowed him across the chest, got out of the car, came around to his side, and pulled him out of the back seat. ‘Hey, man, I don’t want to get physical,’ Gere said in a thin voice. ‘Too late ...’ Stephen Verona put himself in front of Gere. It was clear to everyone that this wasn’t working. One of us had to go.”

Paul Mace, Sylvester Stallone, Henry Winkler, and Perry King in ‘The Lords of Flatbush’Credit: Ebbets Field Film/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

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Stallone said that Verona chose to keep him and fire Gere. Shortly after, he said that De Niro left to pursue another project. Perry King and Henry Winkler joined the 1974 film in their place.

The feud appeared to last decades, as Elton John wrote in his 2019 memoir that Stallone and Gere nearly got into another fight over Princess Diana in the 1990s. In his book, he recalled attending a dinner party with the late royal and two American actors, whom he alleged were later found “squaring up to each other, apparently about to settle their differences over Diana by having a fist-fight.”

“As the rest of us chatted, I couldn’t help notice a strange atmosphere in the room. Judging by the kind of looks he kept shooting them, Diana and Richard Gere’s newly blossoming friendship was not going down well with Sylvester Stallone at all,” John wrote. “I think he may have turned up to the party with the express intention of picking Diana up, only to find his plans for the evening ruined.”

The Steps is now available wherever books are sold.

on Entertainment Weekly

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