Sylvester Stallone has revealed that he and Arnold Schwarzenegger shared such a “violent hatred”

Sylvester Stallone has revealed that he and Arnold Schwarzenegger shared such a “violent hatred” for each other during the Eighties that “even our DNA hated each other”.

The 67-year-old action star told US talk show host David Letterman of the extent of their rivalry during an interview this week.

“We had a violent hatred,” he said. “Have you ever had that ever? Competition where you really had an arch enemy that kind of brings out the best in you. As Arnold would say, it really pushed you to accelerate.”

The animosity between the pair was so bad that Stallone stated that he hated “that [Schwarzenegger] was on the planet, basically.”

But the intensity of his dislike for Schwarzenegger had the advantage of encouraging Stallone to raise his game at a time when his rival was starring in box office hits such as The Terminator and Conan the Barbarian.

“After a while, I started to like this competition, this one-upmanship. He’d get a bigger gun. I’d shoot more people. He’d shoot more people. But then, he went into science fiction, which kind of left me behind.”

Stallone hit the big time with a starring role in the acclaimed 1976 film Rocky, which he also co-wrote. The Rocky series continued throughout the Eighties, but Schwarzenegger’s fame threatened to eclipse Stallone's with a string of successful actions films, including Predator, Commando and The Running Man.

However, the pair have now put their troubled relationship behind them. In 2010, they starred in The Expendables together with a supporting cast of action hero royalty, a franchise which has since spawned two sequels.

They can now be seen together in Escape Plan, released in cinemas this weekend. Stallone plays a structural engineer who ends up behind bars as a result of being framed. There he meets his cellmate, played by Schwarzenegger, and the pair engage in a battle to escape the maximum security prison.

“Now we have this mutual respect, we’re survivors, and now it’s like, ‘You know what? This guy is pretty special,’” Stallone said of his current relationship with Schwarzenegger.

This is not the first time Stallone has made candid revelations about his co-stars. In August, he announced on Twitter that Harrison Ford would be replacing Bruce Willis in the newest Expendables films. He added that he had been waiting years for such news, and described Willis as “greedy and lazy…a sure formula for career failure.”