BOOK REVIEW: Jim Walsh on Sylvester Stallone’s The Steps: A Memoir
Sylvester Stallone’s The Steps: A Memoir is, on the surface, the story of an unlikely Hollywood success: a young man battling poverty, rejection and personal difficulties who eventually creates Rocky, one of cinema’s most enduring underdog stories. Yet beneath the familiar narrative of ambition and perseverance lies something of greater interest to Catholic readers: the complicated relationship between suffering, faith, self-reliance and the possibility of spiritual renewal.
Published in September 2026, the memoir follows Stallone from his arrival in New York in 1969 to the triumph of Rocky at the 1977 Academy Awards. The famous steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, immortalised by Rocky Balboa’s triumphant run, provide the book with its central metaphor. For Stallone, progress is neither easy nor assured. Every ascent is preceded by setbacks, humiliation and the temptation to abandon the climb.
It is an image that resonates with Christian spirituality, although Stallone’s achievement is not to offer a systematic account of Catholic belief. Rather, he presents a life in which questions of faith emerge through experience, often when human resources appear exhausted.
One of the memoir’s most revealing Catholic connections concerns Stallone’s schooling. In a recent Associated Press interview about the book, he recalled priests teaching that suffering was necessary for faith. His subsequent life has certainly involved physical suffering: numerous injuries and operations accompanied his determination to perform demanding roles and establish himself as an actor. Yet Stallone acknowledges the danger in his instinct to endure everything through sheer willpower. His extraordinary resilience is also, by his own admission, a tendency to push himself too far.
For Catholic readers, this raises an important distinction. Christianity does not teach that pain is valuable simply because it hurts, nor that self-inflicted suffering is automatically virtuous. The Christian understanding of sacrifice finds its meaning in love, fidelity and the redemptive suffering of Christ. Stallone’s relentless physical commitment may illustrate perseverance, but it also exposes the limits of treating personal toughness as a substitute for grace.
The memoir’s spiritual significance becomes clearer in Stallone’s recollection of his desperate circumstances while developing the screenplay for Rocky. At 29, with his prospects seemingly exhausted, he describes an episode of intense distress in which he asked for spiritual help. He had previously been agnostic, reluctant to depend upon God or religious symbols. In his account, faith returned at a moment when his own resources appeared insufficient.
Whilst this is not necessarily a fully articulated Catholic conversion narrative it nevertheless resembles a familiar Christian experience: the discovery that human weakness need not be the final word. The apostolic insight that divine strength can be manifested through weakness offers a fruitful lens through which to consider Stallone’s recollection. His story suggests that acknowledging need can be an act of courage rather than defeat.
That experience also sheds light on the name of the boxing club encountered at the beginning of Rocky: The Resurrection. Stallone has explained that the name became a meaningful tribute to his rediscovered faith. [2] For Christians, resurrection is far more than a general symbol of making a comeback. It proclaims Christ’s victory over sin and death. Nevertheless, the film’s setting acquires an evocative resonance: a bruised and overlooked man enters a place whose very name suggests the possibility of new life.
This connection is particularly significant because Rocky is not simply a story about winning. Rocky Balboa’s defining achievement is his willingness to continue when success seems improbable. His struggle offers an accessible image of hope, although Christian hope ultimately rests not on human determination alone but on God’s faithfulness.
Stallone’s memoir is not without limitations. Its emphasis on individual grit can leave the reader wondering whether success is being treated as the ultimate vindication of suffering. Catholic social teaching, by contrast, insists that human dignity does not depend on achievement, wealth or public recognition. Those who never reach the summit are no less worthy of respect than those whose names become famous.
Indeed, the most spiritually fruitful reading of The Steps may be found not in Stallone’s eventual triumph but in the vulnerability revealed along the way. His account of hardship invites reflection on the difference between prideful self-sufficiency and the humility required to accept help.
Ultimately, The Steps is best approached as a candid Hollywood memoir with significant Christian resonances, rather than as an explicitly Catholic spiritual autobiography. Its strongest contribution to a Catholic readership lies in the questions it raises about suffering, faith and the limits of self-reliance. Stallone’s journey reminds us that perseverance matters, but also that the deepest transformations may begin when we admit that perseverance alone is not enough.
The climb is compelling. The more profound question is what, or whom, we trust when our strength fails.
Sylvester Stallone’s memoir, The Steps: A Memoir, was published by William Morrow on 29th September.
By James Walsh