Actor Jason Statham and Hollywood mainstay Sylvester Stallone have collaborated on six feature films together. They starred opposite each other in four “Expendables” movies (with Statham taking the lead over Stallone for the abysmal “Expend4bles”), and Statham starred in the Stallone-scripted “Homefront” in 2013. Most recently, Stallone wrote the script for the 2025 David Ayer-directed Statham vehicle “A Working Man.” The pair, one can infer, know each other’s work very well.
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Statham, 57, has long been one of cinema’s most reliable badasses, often playing cops, mercenaries, assassins, killer, or other ultra-capable dolers of violence. He has done a lot of his own stunts, and he ran down his injuries in a 2023 interview with Collider. He did a real helicopter stunt for the movie “Crank,” which he said was quite difficult, and he recalled having to actually jump from a moving jetski onto the back of a speeding bus in “Transporter 2.” Surprisingly, the actor used no safety harness for the jump. In the course of his career, Statham has injured himself numerous times, and he talked about working through a film with a torn bicep. He also related an injury he sustained while filming “The Mechanic” in 2011. “I really screwed up my neck,” he said, “doing this jump from one high platform on the back of the boat, into this dinghy.”
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Statham admitted that it was his own ego that led him to think he could do all his dangerous stunts. He also admitted, in that same Collider interview, that his ego was a quality he shared with Stallone. Indeed, he knew they both shared huge egos, as Stallone also has a lot of the same stunt-caused injuries.
Jason Statham and Sylvester Stallone both have huge egos (and a lot of injuries as a result)
Statham recognized that both he and Stallone fell prey to a certain kind of machismo that calls actors to do their own stunts. Almost as a way to prove that they are, in life, just as capable and cool as the characters they play. Naturally, the tougher stunts are typically left to the stunt teams (who will start getting Oscars in 2028), but Statham felt like he had to prove himself. In the interview mentioned above, he seems a little embarrassed by his quest for machismo, as all it has provided him — and Stallone — is long-lasting physical pain. Statham said:
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“You know, I’m nursing a lot of bad injuries. Stallone in himself. He’s got a roadmap of injuries over the course of his career. A lot of the things we do, it’s because our ego gets in front of us, and we want it to be authentic. We want people to see that that’s us doing it. We want the audience to go for the ride. A lot of the decisions … I think I’m getting a bit smarter now. I think I’ll try and be smart because of the necessity to be smart as my body is wearing out a little bit. Some of the niggles.”
“The niggles,” meaning the lingering pains that bother him every day. At age 57, Statham is recognizing that he won’t be able to do this forever. Lord knows how Tom Cruise has managed to be as daring as he has until the age of 62. The actor’s next film will be the 2026 actioner “Mutiny,” directed by Jean-François Richet. He played Deckard Shaw in a cameo in “Fast X,” although it remains to be seen if that film will ever get its sequel.
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