Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone's mother, Jackie, was an astrologer, among other things, and she became famous in her own right for reading people's futures from their backsides, a practice she called rumpology. His own beginning was harder. Complications during his birth in New York damaged a nerve in his face, leaving the lower left side partly paralyzed. The droop in his lip and the slurred, mumbling speech that resulted became, in time, part of his screen persona.

He was born on July 6, 1946, in New York City, at 7:20 in the evening, per an A-rated Astro-Databank entry. His Sun is in Cancer, with Saturn also in Cancer, both in the seventh house, which deals with partners and other people. Cancer is sensitive, family-minded and protective, and Saturn there brings hard lessons through relationships and slow-earned security. Stallone's most famous creation, Rocky Balboa, is at heart a tender, loyal man who fights for the people he loves, and the Rocky films are as much about Rocky and Adrian's marriage as about boxing.

Mercury, Venus and Pluto in Leo, and Mars in Virgo, all fall in his eighth house, the realm of crisis, survival and transformation. The eighth house is about hitting bottom and coming back, which is the plot of nearly every Stallone film and the story of his own career.

His childhood in Hell's Kitchen and later Philadelphia was turbulent; his parents had a stormy marriage and divorced, and he was expelled from several schools. He studied drama at the University of Miami, then struggled for years in New York, taking any work he could find.

In March 1975 he watched the journeyman boxer Chuck Wepner go the distance with Muhammad Ali, and within days he had written the script for Rocky. Studios wanted to buy it for a bigger star, but Stallone refused to sell unless he played the lead, even though he was nearly broke. Rocky, released in 1976, took the Oscar for best picture, and Stallone was nominated for both acting and writing.

His Moon is in Libra in the tenth house, where a public life is lived. A Libra Moon seeks fairness and connection, and in the tenth it ties his emotional life to his public reputation. Stallone has spoken about wanting his films to inspire audiences to get up after they have been knocked down.

Jupiter and Neptune, both in Libra, sit in his ninth house of wider horizons. He went on to create another franchise with Rambo, in First Blood in 1982, and he directed several of his own films. In 2015 he returned as an older Rocky in Creed, winning a Golden Globe and earning another Oscar nomination. Later he starred in the series Tulsa King.

He married Jennifer Flavin in 1997, and they have three daughters. His son Sage died in 2012. The Cancer Sun gave Rocky his heart; the eighth-house planets gave him the will to keep getting up.