How Anthony Ippolito talked his way into playing Sylvester Stallone in 'I Play Rocky'

Anthony Ippolito saw the opportunity of a lifetime when he learned that Oscar-winning director Peter Farrelly was developing a film about Sylvester Stallone’s determination to write and star in the original “Rocky.” There was just one problem: Nobody had asked him to audition for “I Play Rocky.”“So, I kind of just took it upon myself to make some stuff on my own and kind of send it to them unsolicited,” the 27-year-old actor said in a recent interview with The Associated Press ahead of the movie's limited release Friday.It was a move that could be seen as taking a page from the book of Stallone's own improbable rise to stardom but, for Ippolito, “it didn’t really necessarily feel that way at the time, to be honest. I was just hoping somebody would see it.”Farrelly did — and was convinced from the start.“He sent his tape, you know, cold, and we’re like, that’s the guy,” the director recalled. “We were going to do a worldwide search, we never did it.”Farrelly was particularly impressed b