Sylvester Stallone says he nearly knocked Al Gore’s teeth out at a documentary premiere back in the early 2000s, and he isn’t sorry about it. The “Rocky” star told the story during a recent podcast appearance, laughing as he looked back on a night that could have ended very differently.
According to Stallone, he had brought his teenage daughter along to a red-carpet screening in Los Angeles. It was supposed to be a fun night out. Then the former vice president came over to say hello.
“He spent five minutes haranguing my 17-year-old daughter on her carbon footprint,” Stallone said. He said Gore started with small talk but quickly moved on to lecturing her about cars, flights, and how much energy her generation was wasting. Stallone stood there for a while, waiting for it to end. It didn’t.
“I let him know that I’d knock his teeth out in front of everybody if he didn’t stop,” Stallone said. He said he leaned in close and kept his voice low, so only Gore could hear. He didn’t have to say it twice.
“He stopped right there and then,” Stallone said. “I haven’t been invited to his premieres since.” The host burst out laughing, and so did Stallone. He said his daughter was mortified at the time but now tells the story at dinner parties herself.
“She was a kid,” he said. “She came to see a movie, not to get scolded by a politician about the ice caps. I’m her father. That’s my job.” Stallone said he has nothing against people who care about the environment. What bothered him, he said, was a grown man lecturing a teenager who had done nothing wrong, especially after arriving at the event himself by private jet, as Stallone remembers it.
“You fly in on a jet and then tell a 17-year-old she’s ruining the planet,” he said. “Come on.” Gore became the face of climate activism in that era, touring the world to talk about global warming and later winning a Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Fans admired his passion, but critics often pointed to his large homes and frequent flights as signs of hypocrisy.
The clip of Stallone’s story spread quickly online. Plenty of parents said they would have done the same thing, and many praised him for standing up for his kid. Others joked that it was the most Rocky Balboa thing they had ever heard.
Not everyone was amused. Some environmental activists called the story an example of how celebrities brush off the climate crisis. A few said threatening violence was nothing to brag about, even years later. Gore’s team did not respond to a request for comment.
Stallone, for his part, says he would do it again. Asked if he and Gore ever patched things up, he just smiled. “Some people take longer to learn than others,” he said.