In an inspirational message to his friend Billy Baldwin, Sylvester Stallone, 73, calls Baldwin’s son the “real life Rocky” for his fight with cancer.
It was a “simple movie about will, determination and heart,” Stallone wrote of his most famous movie and film role, “like the hellish journey your son triumphed over life, fighting like a real life Rocky, getting knocked down over and over, but refusing to every stay down!”
“They ask some fun & quirky questions like…’What is the greatest movie ever made?’ My son Vance answered 'Rocky' so I thought… I gotta tell Sly and gave him an update on how my son's doing cuz last year he battled through a very intense health crisis.
How about this reply from Sly… pretty cool huh?” he wrote.
“It makes [me] so happy to hear that Vance is standing tall with his fist raised in victory reaching to sky,” Stallone also wrote, ending with a personal message for Vance: “Always keep punching, Kid…Sly.”
Vance was 16 when he was diagnosed with cancer, Baldwin wrote in an Instagram post featuring a photo of his son, which seems to now be taken down. "He went through 28 rounds of chemo yet stayed VERY positive, focused and kept his life as normal as possible … every single day.
Baldwin and his famous brothers have faced cancer in the family before. Both parents have fought the disease. The family patriarch, Alexander Baldwin, died of lung cancer at age 55.
Thirty-six years later, Alec Baldwin marked the anniversary of his father’s death with a touching Instagram post: "My father was a uniquely caring, dedicated, stern, smart and, at times, funny man who served as a public school teacher and coach for 28 years until his death at 55."
In his mom's Instagram birthday post, Billy wrote that the "coolest thing of all was that, after surviving breast cancer in the early 90's, she formed the Carol Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund.
The center, at Stony Brook University, was founded in 1996 to provide accessible screening, medical care, and support services regardless of patients' ability to pay.
