How you measure up against action heroes — from Bruce Lee to Sylvester Stallone

As a Brit born from Italian parents, Sylvester Stallone movies were an integral part of my teenage years.

By the time I really sat up and paid attention to his film output, he’d already knocked out three Rockys and a couple of Rambos. With his penchant for whipping off his top for the slightest of reasons – albeit in Rocky it was necessary to the plot- I do remember thinking how big and muscular he was.

Stallone, 78 today (July 6), was one of the front runners of hulking Hollywood heroes who rippled their way through the 80s. As a youngster there was an admiration for the fine form of the likes of Stallone and Schwarzenegger, often accompanied by a desire to get my skinny frame as big as them.

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There’s lots of quality news coming out of the US.

More than 30 years on and I am quite a lot bigger than 13-year-old me, although the muscles are lacking a little, but curiosity has got the better of me.

While writing an informative piece on Arnold Schwarzenegger recently, I saw some stats on the Austrian Oak in his prime and checked out how I compared.

Somewhat unsurprisingly I only had him beat on waist size, but it did beg the question, how big are the other action heroes?

So to help answer that puzzler, the Daily Star has compiled a list of the biggest action stars over the years to see how big they were off the silver screen in their prime.

Sylvester Stallone

With his snarl, the result of an accident during childbirth, swagger, and New York accent, Stallone was already pretty fearsome looking even before he got super-jacked for Rocky III.

He beat all comers in Rocky and took out an entire police force in Rambo, and we all believed it. But in real life Stallone has never been ‘big’ per se, he’s often dwarfed by his co-stars and never weighed much more than 14stone (90kg). But putting that much muscle on a 5ft 9.5ins (1.77m) frame is going to look impressive.

To make the leap in physical form from the second and third Rocky movies, he admitted to only eating very small portions of oatmeal cookies made with brown rice and up to 25 cups of coffee a day with honey and a couple of scoops of tuna fish.

Bruce Lee

Mr Lee was a fitness guru, with a shockingly high number of hours spent in the gym honing his physique and skills.

Any bloke who gets the nod from Chuck ‘can slam revolving doors’ Norris is bound to be a bit on the hard side. But for all his high-kicking, a**-whooping antics on the big screen, he was actually quite diddy in real life.

At 5ft 7ins and 128 pounds , Bruce Lee was not a big man, but he was the ultimate healthy, strong and mentally fit human being, until he sadly died. Lee showed others that size just did not matter when it came to combat, with his lightning speed he would have you saying ‘ow’ before you realised the fight had begun. His feats of strength from two finger push ups to one inch punches, are stuff legend.

Jean-Claude Van Damme

The Muscles from Brussels burst onto our screens in split kicking style in the late 80s, in fact even earlier if you count his role as a boogying extra in the 1984 movie Breakin’.

And JCVD was definitely not shy to show off his bod, in some cases nearly all of it. At the drop of a hat he’d be out of his shirt revealing his ripped, flexible torso, born from years of ballet and martial arts training.

Off screen he is around 5ft 9 (1.77m) and weighed just over 13stone (84kg), but could apparently bench nearly twice his own body weight. Coupled with a pro full contact karate record of 18 wins and one loss, he wasn’t just acting the tough guy.

What’s more, Stallone has allegedly claimed that when Van Damme challenged Steven Seagal to a fight during a party at his house, Seagal opted out.

Chuck Norris

It’s almost impossible to search up facts without stumbling across Chuck Norris ‘facts’.

There is a little truth to his hardness, of course. After serving the US Air Force, he went onto win multiple martial arts tournaments, including a six year run as the world professional middleweight karate champion.

He holds more black belts than you can wave a stick at (seven), two of which he’s a 10th Dan.

But how big is he really? Is it a case of little man syndrome. Well, kinda, the 84-year-old is 5ft 8.5ins (174cm) and weighs in at 11 stone (70kg).

But, would you want to step up to the octogenarian? Rumour has it he died 20 years ago, but Death is too scared to collect him.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Ok, so this is going to be a bit of a no-brainer here. The bloke who walked away with seven Mr Olympia titles is probably going to be reasonably big.

A quick look through the stats and I appear to have prime Arnie beat on waist size – go me – although I don’t think that’s a good thing.

Luckily thanks to his competing days his full stats are available for all to compare themselves to the Austrian Oak. Height: 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m), contest weight 235 lb (107 kg), chest: 57 in (140 cm), waist: 33 in (84 cm), arms: 22 in (56 cm), thighs: 29.5 in (75 cm), calves: 20 in (51 cm).

And it wasn’t just bodybuilding the Terminator star did either, he was also ridiculously strong too. On the Pat McAfee Show he revealed that his best bench press was 525lbs (238kg), his best deadlift was 710lbs (322kg), and his best squat was 610lbs (277kg).

Dolph Lungdren

The 6ft 5in martial artist, who holds a masters degree in chemical engineering is one nerd you don’t want to get on the wrong side of.

Before the Swedish-American action hero even set foot in front of the camera he already won the European Kyokushin karate championships in both 1980 and 1981.

Ultimately he opted to go down the action route and burst onto our screens in Rocky IV, killing Apollo Creed shortly afterwards. So tough was he that during the shoot for his breakout role he accidentally put Stallone into hospital, after hitting his co-star so hard his heart swelled up.

He went on to star in the live action version of He-Man as the titular character, at which time he weighed his heaviest 17st 10lbs (112kg). However, despite his size, he says he never went much above 300lbs (140kg) on the squat or deadlift, even in his younger years

Jason Statham

From former model and street trader to acting hardman, Jason Statham is almost your man of the people actor.

With his rugged, unshaven features, and thinning hair, the 56-year-old could almost be one of us ordinary blokes. Ok, so he was a member of Britain’s National Diving Squad for 12 years, is still in amazing shape, and his partner is model and actress Rosie Alice Huntington-Whiteley, but still.

As well as the diving he was an avid footballer and practitioner of Chinese martial arts, kickboxing and karate. Although his tough guy act is just an act, as he’s rumoured to be really charismatic and friendly in real life, he is still pretty hard. The 5ft 10in actor takes pride in doing many of his own stunts in his movies, from hand-to-hand combat to dangling 12 stone (77kg) frame from a helicopter 3000 feet above downtown LA.

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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk