“The biggest misconception while I was with Sylvester was the fact that everybody thought I married him because of money,” Nielsen said during an interview.
There was a lot of controversy surrounding Sylvester Stallone's marriage to Brigitte Nielsen. The actor was married to Sasha Czack from 1974 to 1985, but his first interaction with Nielsen in 1985 left a lasting impression on him. Nielsen—barely 22 years old at the time and married—was hoping to make her mark in the movie industry and she decided to contact Stallone, who was 17 years her senior. She slid a note under Stallone's door at his hotel in Manhattan. ”My name is Brigitte Nielsen,” the message read, according to Entertainment Weekly. “I’d really like to meet you. Here’s my number.”
Intrigued by the bold woman, he went to meet her the same night. Shortly after, the two started dating and were married by December 1985. Nielsen then went on to act in a couple of roles with her husband in movies like Rocky IV and Cobra. But in less than two years, both of them were headed for splitsville.
When Nielsen and Stallone got married, people made assumptions about her intentions perceiving her to be a woman who married an older, richer man, just so she could establish herself in the industry. Nielsen later revealed that she wasn't the one who was after Stallone. In fact, it was the other way around. “The biggest misconception while I was with Sylvester was the fact that everybody thought I married him because of money,” Nielsen said on "Oprah: Where Are They Now?", as reported by HuffPost. “They didn’t understand that he begged me to marry. He begged me!”
Though hesitant at first to take things forward so fast, the Danish model remembers giving in. “I remember thinking, ‘This is too early. This is not right,’” she explained. “At the same time, everybody was going, ‘Who wouldn’t want to marry Rocky?’”
But just within 19 months after the union, the two got a divorce. They never had any children together, either. Now, looking back at the failed marriage, Nielsen admits she should have done things differently. “If I would go back in time, I shouldn’t have married him,” Nielsen revealed. “And he shouldn’t have married me! I don’t want to sit here and come across as an angel. I probably was also a pain in the butt at times… But it really just wasn’t for me, and it became very ugly, like some divorces do.”
After the split, Nielsen's career also took a back seat. “When I left Sylvester, all doors closed on me,” she said. “I was basically blacklisted.” And that is when she took the decision to return to Europe.
Stallone then married Jennifer Flavin in 1997. In 2008, when Stallone and Flavin, his wife of 26 years, saw a glimpse of his ex-wife while watching a TV show, Flavin asked what was going on in his mind during their time together, per Evening Standard. "I thought I was watching an old home movie. I sat on the sofa with Jennifer and of course, she pauses it and says: 'What were you thinking?' I go, 'I wasn't. It was an out-of-body experience. I've concluded that love is a temporary form of insanity and we should cut each other some slack.' I consider my life 10 percent on target and 90 percent mistakes. But those 10 percent counted."
But, despite his past life, he is very settled with his current spouse with who he shares three daughters and he has never been happier. After all, that's all that matters, right?
References:
https://ew.com/article/1997/12/12/stallone-married-brigitte-12-years-ago/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brigitte-nielsen-sylvester-stallone-marriage_n_5536778
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photos by (L) Leon Bennett (R) Amanda Edwards
