Actor Sylvester Stallone was offered $300,000 for a script he’d written called Rocky. There was a catch – Stallone couldn’t act in the film. Sly declined the offer and the studio eventually submitted, he went on to act in the film for a paltry $35,000. “That was pretty crazy,” recalled Stallone, “considering I had $106 in my bank account at the time.”
Stallone didn’t get rich on the backend of the original Rocky but he did get something arguably more important, movie stardom. The Rocky franchise has made well over $1 Billion and made Stallone one of the richest actors in Hollywood.