CANNES: Sylvester Stallone said on Friday that he and Arnold Schwarzenegger should set up a Hollywood elocution school together as he gave the Cannes film festival a sneak preview of “Rambo V: Last Blood”.

The “Rocky” star opened up about the facial paralysis that dogged him since birth and left him not being able to speak properly for years.

He told a masterclass at the world’s biggest film festival that he thought he would never make it because of his “physical flaws”.

“It was hard for me to speak. I had an accident when I was born so this side of my mouth was paralysed. So even as a boy when I talked I had this very deep ‘How ya doing?’ voice,” Stallone said.

“So (later) when I was trying to get jobs in commercials, the director would say, ‘What are you saying? What language is this?’ “I knew it was bad when Arnold Schwarzenegger said to me, ‘You have an accent.’ “Arnold and I should open up a school for speech lessons, it would be perfect. If we can make it, anyone can.” A nerve was severed in Stallone’s face when doctors used forceps during his difficult birth.

The 72-year-old action hero actor showed a rarely-seen philosophical side at his Cannes talk before a screening of a restored version of his original “Rambo” film, “First Blood”.

His life’s work has been about resilience, Stallone told cineastes gathered in the French Riviera resort, and he has found himself returning to the theme again and again.

“There is something about the nature of men and women, we are resilient, we have been through so many upheavals over thousands of years,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2019