This week I happened to hear the tragic news of the passing of Carl Weathers who died at the age of 76. Although I do not know him personally, he is someone I remember fondly from the TV and it made me sad as I connected him with some of the greatest moments in movie history.
One of the famous childhood film moments from my memory was when Carl starred as Apollo Creed and the character whom he is most famous for portraying.
The iconic scene with the great song by James Brown with the charasmatic entrance by Apollo has stuck with me through the years. On the one hand it is a great entertaining performance and we can see the charisma of Carl shine through his Apollo performance, it gives a deeper life message to us to not let our egos take over, which I think I suffered from the most as a young teenager and battled to control.
I think nobody could have played the character of Apollo, other than Carl, and he will always stay in my mind the great Apollo Creed.
Carl who was previously a well known American Football player before becoming an actor, was later to star in many more films, some of the most well known ones that I watched included The Predator with Arnie. Working with some great people like Sylvestor Stallone and Arnie shows how well respected he was in the industry.
More recently he was a central character in the Mandalorian series which was great and it was awesome to see him in the Star Wars franchise.
Carl had an amazing onscreen presence and it was always a pleasure to watch programmes with him in them. Of course I will always treasure the great memories of watching him in the Rocky movies.
In his famous fight scene with Rocky he explains that we shouldn't give up on battles in our life. It is such a powerful interview, I share it here.
I cannot imagine the Rocky franchise being so successful without him and as a young person, the great lessons learned from the movies and his acting have stayed with me through my life. I know that his passion for their work was equalled also by Sylvestor himself. They were a magnificent duo onscreen together.
It makes me feel sad to lose such a great person, but I have an immense gratitude that he has given the world so much with his movies and the impact he had on me as a young boy growing up.
Thank you Carl and Rest In Peace.
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Used under fair-use section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.
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