Tourists Run into Sylvester Stallone at Philadelphia’s ‘Rocky Steps’

A group of tourists in Philadelphia got the surprise of a lifetime when they happened to bump into Rocky actor Sylvester Stallone — at the top of the “Rocky Steps” made famous in the film.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Pete Rowe was visiting the city with two friends from California when they decided to end their trip with a run up the famous “Rocky Steps,” the staircase in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Rowe and his friends reached the top and were celebrating, when they heard a voice speak up from behind them.

“You guys got up here pretty fast,” the man said. “You’re making me look bad.”

It was none other than Sylvester Stallone, who played Rocky in the 1976 film and its sequels.

“Yes, it was very fun for both Mr. Stallone and the surprised visitors,” the actor’s publicist, Michelle Bega, told the Inquirer. “When he visits the steps… he prefers not to make an event of it – just be with the fans in a genuine and happily surprising way.”

Stallone was in Philadelphia to film the seventh installment of the Rocky franchise, tentatively titled Creed.

Rowe and his friends took a selfie with the actor and posted it to social media.

According to the paper, Stallone has long loved the iconic steps in front of the Museum of Art. When he was writing the script for the original Rocky film, he reportedly wrote the now-famous scene with those specific steps in mind. Every film in the series has featured the steps in some way.

“There’s very few things, iconic situations, that are accessible,” Stallone told author Michael Vitez for a book he wrote about the steps called Rocky Stories: Tales of Love, Hope, and Happiness at America’s Most Famous Steps. “You know you can’t borrow Superman’s cape. You can’t use the Jedi laser sword. But the steps are there. The steps are accessible. And standing up there, you kind of have a piece of the Rocky pie. You are part of what the whole myth is.”