Sylvester Stallone Opens Up About the Grief & Guilt He Has Carried Since Losing His Son Sage

Sep 30, 2026 by apost team

Sylvester Stallone has spoken about the loss of his son Sage many times over the years — in statements, in documentaries, in interviews that have circled the grief without quite landing at its center. In a new interview with The New York Times, he found the words.

Sage Stallone died in 2012 at the age of 36, from coronary artery disease linked to atherosclerosis. He was Stallone's eldest son, the child of his first marriage to Sasha Czack, and had acted alongside his father in "Rocky V." Stallone described him as "a very kind kid" who "had a great mother" and "would have done wonderful things in the future."

He recalled learning of Sage's death in a phone call from a man he had never met — his mother's third husband, a doctor named Dr. Stephen Levine. "I'll never forget, it was so cold," Stallone told the Times. "'Sly, he's gone. Sage — he's gone.' I went, 'Gone where?'" He described the call as ending almost immediately. "'He's gone. I'm sorry. Click.'"

In the days that followed, Stallone held himself together. Arrangements needed to be made. There were people to notify. There were things to do. He managed.

And then, about a week later, alone in a room, something broke.

"A wail came out of me I've never heard before or since," he said. "It was just pain and grief and guilt. It was not human."

The guilt, he explained, is the part that does not quiet. "You have so many episodes of guilt. Like: What could I have done? Should I have been there? What if I did that? If I went right or went left?"

He has no answer to any of those questions. He has learned to live with that.

The New York Times interview arrived alongside the press push for "The Expendables 5," in which Stallone returns for what he has described as the final chapter of the franchise. At 80, he is still working — still showing up, still making films, still carrying the weight of a life that has included extraordinary professional highs and extraordinary personal losses in roughly equal measure.

Sage was the first. Stallone's second son, Seargeoh, was diagnosed with autism as a toddler — a diagnosis that led Stallone and Sasha Czack to become early and vocal advocates for autism awareness. Stallone married Jennifer Flavin in 1997, with whom he has three daughters — Sophia, Sistine, and Scarlet — and from whom he briefly separated in 2022 before reconciling.

He has spoken about family as the thing that has grounded him through all of it. He has spoken about the particular experience of losing a child — the way it changes the geometry of grief, the way no amount of professional success or personal resilience makes it a comprehensible thing. "You don't get over that," he told PEOPLE. It was not a complaint. It was simply a fact.

Sage Stallone was an actor and a filmmaker. He co-starred with his father in "Rocky V" and directed the 2006 short film "Vic," which screened at the Palm Springs Film Festival. He was proud of his father and proud to be his father's son. The feeling, clearly, was mutual.

Stallone offered the clearest account yet of what that pride meant to him — and what its sudden, irreversible absence has felt like. "He would have done wonderful things in the future," he said. Then: "But no, you don't get over that." The grief is the proof.

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Are you a fan of Sylvester Stallone? Do you think his honesty about the grief and guilt of losing a child is one of the most moving things he has shared publicly? Let us know in the comments and pass this on to your family, friends, and anyone who has ever lost someone they love.