Seeing ‘Daylight’ At 50, Stallone Adjusts To Being A More Likeable, Not-So-Perfect Film Hero

A new Stallone is loose in the world. But this time, there’s no need to panic or dive for cover.

The new Sly is easygoing. He’s contented, relaxed and appears to be happier than he has been in years.

As well he should be. At 50, Stallone is the most grateful of new fathers. His 3-month-old daughter, Sophia Rose, recently came through open-heart surgery with flying colors. The crisis brought him closer to the baby’s mother, Jennifer Flavin, than the couple has ever been in their off-and-on, nine-year relationship (they plan to marry after the holidays).

Stallone feels so unaccustomedly comfortable these days, he’s even put on a few pounds. And intends to keep them.

“Since I’ve gained the weight I’ve noticed, in TV interviews and whatever, there is a new accessibility,” says Stallone, who’s become one of the biggest superstars on the planet by playing bigger-than-life superheroes such as Rambo, Judge Dredd and what might be called the middle-period Rocky. “I think it makes people feel like, ‘Hey, he’s one of us,’ that I’m not trying to be this, like, ‘Death’s head’ character.”

Stallone actually gained 30-odd pounds for the movie he’s just finished shooting, “Copland.” He decided to retain about half of that weight after getting a look at the more familiar, ultra-cut figure he strikes in “Daylight,” which opens Friday.

Although “Daylight” is the kind of large-scale action piece that’s typical of the actor’s recent work (“Cliffhanger,” “Demolition Man,” “The Specialist”), this tale of terror and survival in a collapsed commuter tunnel actually marks the beginning of Stallone’s post-perfect-power-hero phase.

He plays Kit Latura, a disgraced emergency medical services administrator who works his way into the burning, flooding Hudson River tunnel to rescue the survivors of a horrendous toxic chemical explosion. For all his know-how and bravery, however, Kit soon realizes that he hasn’t got a clue as to how they’ll get out alive.

Not your typical, blast-on-ahead Rambovian approach. For Stallone, it was a step back toward the kind of action movies he loves - and hopes to make in the future.

“I’m not completely abandoning action,” Stallone says, denying widespread reports that he’s distancing himself from the genre due to the poor box-office receptions of “Judge Dredd” and “Assassins.” “When I said that I didn’t want to do action films, what I meant primarily are those super-action films that have very little to do with the kind of adventure films, like ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ and ‘Spartacus,’ that I grew up loving.

“It’s just very dissatisfying to go into the world of supercomputer enhancement and acting against empty blue screens, like we did in ‘Judge Dredd.’ Whereas, in ‘Daylight,’ you were there. That water was wet and those flames were hot.”

And it was a royal pain to make, regardless of how good it felt to work on a practical, floodable, ingeniously designed set. Built at the vast Cinecitta studio complex in Rome, Italy, the demolished New York tunnel was equipped with gas jets, hydraulic concrete slabs and underwater tracks for the film’s fleet of sliding, floating and crashing vehicles.

After surviving a long, wet shoot in this Roman purgatorium, you’d be looking for a different genre to work in, too.

“It was unbelievable,” Stallone says gravely. “The first time I walked in there, it was for a scene where the place was on fire and the water was just starting to leak through. I had to get up on a car and make a speech. The cars are like ice and I know if you fall on them they’ll cut you to shreds. And just as I get down, the water starts cascading through and it sends this giant wave of air ahead of it.

“I turned to the other actors and said, ‘I’ve done a lot of films, folks, and a lot of dangerous ones. It doesn’t get any more real than this. This is not about acting, I tell ya; if you’re as scared as I am, then just look at the camera. You’re doing your job.”’

You’d think making “Copland” might be even more terrifying, at least in Stallone’s case. Not considered much of an actor’s actor since he wrote and starred in the Oscar-winning, original “Rocky” 20 years ago, Stallone found himself up against the most acclaimed actor of his generation, Robert De Niro, and a crack posse of other true thespians: Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta and Michael Rapaport.

Worse, he was playing the chubby fool, the local cop in a quiet New Jersey suburb that’s home to many hard-case New York City policemen.

Stallone gave up his standard, $20-million-per-picture fee and worked for Screen Actors Guild scale on “Copland.” He was not intimidated by the prospect of working in De Niro’s league, he says. But he dared not mess a scene up.

“I call it face acting,” Stallone says of working on “Copland,” which is scheduled for a summer 1997 release. “It has to flow. The actor you’re working with, Bobby, expects you to feed him the necessary information and energy for his performance.”

Stallone’s new-found interest in more serious work is partially inspired by the “Rocky” 20th anniversary hoopla. The tale of a lovable lug who got his big shot at a heavyweight boxing title changed Stallone’s life as utterly as his fictional alter ego’s. A barely working actor at the time, Stallone refused to sell his script to anyone who would not also let him star. He finally found agreeable producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, who didn’t offer much. But the film earned Stallone a writing Oscar (as well as Best Picture) and a huge international following.

However, subsequent “Rocky” entries grew increasingly violent and ridiculous. Similarly, Stallone’s other big ‘80s franchise character, the disturbed and deadly military veteran Rambo, muscled out into bombastic fantasy after a relatively realistic introductory film, “First Blood.”

“With the 20th anniversary of ‘Rocky,’ the situation that happened with my daughter and having done ‘Copland,’ it’s kind of like the handwriting is on every wall. And on the ceiling,” Stallone observes. “You start to slow down. Now you’re 50, and you’ve had everything your way, but there’s nothing that’s lasted. You’re really all alone with your memories and it gets kind of sad.

“Now, I see, here’s really a second chance to go day-by-day and watch the growth of my daughter,” says Stallone, whose adult son, Sage, has a small role in “Daylight” (his second child, Seargeoh, also from his first marriage, is autistic). “A chance to feel the love of Jennifer, and to focus all of that on the career and private life. What am I giving up for that? Strangers on a train?

“No more. That really is over, as far as I’m concerned. It’s been a counterproductive way to live.”