Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone was born in New York City on 6 July 1946 to an Italian immigrant father and an American mother, Jackie, of Breton French and Ukrainian Jewish ancestry: her paternal grandparents, Rose and Charles Labofisz, were Jewish immigrants from Odesa. He is listed here on that descent alone — he was baptised and raised a devout Catholic and remains a churchgoing Catholic, and has never presented himself as Jewish. Unable to get cast, he wrote the screenplay for Rocky in three days and refused to sell it unless he could play the part; the film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1977, and with nominations for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay he became the third person in history, after Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles, to be nominated for both for the same film.