Sylvester Stallone was once paid just £180 to star in a porn film

Sylvester Stallone once starred in an adult movie, marking his first - very poorly paid - acting role.

Yep, in a classic tale of 'rags to riches', it turns out the actor had some pretty humble beginnings before he broke big with his starring role in the 1976 hit Rocky.

The year was 1970 and a then 24-year-old Stallone was desperate for work of any kind, which makes it pretty unsurprising he signed up to star in a low-budget porn movie.

The Party at Kitty and Stud's follows the NSFW lives of New York City lovers Stud, played by Stallone, and Kitty, played by Henrietta Holm.

As the synopsis so tastefully reads: "They enjoy a robust sex-life, which includes fellatio and light S&M, specifically, Stud belt-whipping Kitty.

"Three women come over for a party and Stud services them, one after the other."

While the flick started off as a genuine X-rated pornographic film, it has gone on to be heavily edited down in the five decades since its original release - no doubt due to Stallone's huge rise to fame in the years following his porn debut.

Stallion Releasing Inc.

It was also re-released under the title The Italian Stallion - which we can imagine was a reference to the actor's nickname in Rocky and an unsuccessful attempt to bank in on his name.

Unsurprisingly, The Party at Kitty and Stud's isn't the actor's proudest achievement, with him once revealing to Playboy how he hated the script and initially wanted nothing to do with it.

But with the young Stallone sleeping rough in a bus station at the time, he felt he had little choice but to take on the role as a means of survival - even if it meant an extremely small payday.

“It was either do that movie or rob someone because I was at the end – at the very end – of my rope,” he told the publication in 1978.

"Instead of doing something desperate, I worked two days for $200 (£180) and got myself out of the bus station.”

Maximum Film / Alamy Stock Photo

Thankfully, these dark days for Stallone were short lived as following his success from Rocky, the actor went on to cement himself as one of Hollywood's most iconic action heroes, with him starring in blockbuster hits such as the Rambo films (1982-2019), Demolition Man (1992), The Specialist (1994), and The Expendables series (2010-2014).

Even though the action veteran is now 76, he's clearly not ready to slow down any time soon as he recently starred in Tulsa King - a gritty series following a New York Mafia capo who has just finished a 25-year prison sentence and, upon release, is sent from the Big Apple to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to establish criminal operations there.