Sylvester Stallone Is Retiring From Playing Rambo

Actor Sylvester Stallone attends The National Board of Review Gala, honoring the 2015 award winners, at Cipriani 42nd Street on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in New York. - AFP

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) - Despite saying for years that he was working on a script for "Rambo V," Sylvester Stallone revealed in a new interview with Variety that he has no intention of reprising his role as the iconic military war hero.

"The heart's willing, but the body says, 'Stay home!,'" Stallone, 69, explained in this week's cover story. "It's like fighters that go back for one last round and get clobbered. 

Leave it to someone else." Stallone noted that he was content with where 2008's "Rambo IV" left the character, which he first played in 1982. 

"You know when you realize there's nothing more to pull out?" Stallone says. 

"As an action film, I was very satisfied that it dealt with the Burmese situation. It had one foot in a current event, the longest civil war in history, 65 years at that time. It was so brutal, which civil war is, I was shocked they even gave me an R-rating. I didn't want to compromise. 

I said, 'This is probably going to be the last decent film of this genre that I'm going to do as a solo act.

"When that was accomplished, I never felt the same willingness to do it again." - Reuters