In a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, former ‘80s star Brigitte Nielsen dished on her short-lived marriage to Rocky Balboa himself, Sylvester Stallone, and confesses that she did not marry Stallone for money or prestige.
Nielsen married him at 22 years old for one simple reason: “He begged me!” she said.
Stallone decided to file for divorce from his first wife for the chance to be with Nielsen, and in less than two years, it would be happening again.
Who Wouldn’t Want To Marry Rocky?
Nielsen claims that the biggest misconception while they were together was “the fact that everybody thought I married him because of money. They didn’t understand that he begged me to marry.”
Huffington Post notes that the couple had only known each other a matter of months before Stallone was filing divorce papers against his first wife to be with Nielsen. And the whole time, it didn’t feel right to her.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is too early. This is not right,'” she recalls. “At the same time, everybody was going, ‘Who wouldn’t want to marry Rocky?'”
Nielsen continued: “If I would go back in time, I shouldn’t have married him. 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 leaving Stallone, who was at that time one of the biggest stars (if not the biggest) in Hollywood, “all doors closed on me,” she says. “I was basically blacklisted.”
With no other choices, Nielsen returned to Europe. “Thank god I had so much work, speaking four languages — Danish, German, English, Italian. Being able to work in all these different languages basically made me survive.”
Lessons Learned
Nielsen’s case is one from which the newly and soon-to-be divorced can learn. Here are just a few of the important lessons: