Sylvester Stallone says ex-rival Arnold Schwarzenegger was ‘superior’ star

Lights, camera, action!

Two of Hollywood’s biggest kick-butt action stars, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, may have clashed back in the 1980s, but now the two are the best of friends.

The “Rocky” icon, 76, appeared in the “Terminator” star’s new Netflix documentary “Arnold,” in which he admitted that the Austrian-American actor is the better action star between the one-time rivals.

“The ’80s was a very interesting time because the definitive ‘action guy’ had not really been formed yet,” Stallone explained.

“Up until that time, action was a car chase like ‘Bullitt’ or ‘The French Connection,’ and a film all about intellect and innuendo and verbal this and verbal that,” he recalled.

Stallone then admitted that Schwarzenegger, 75, was a pioneer of the fist-pumping genre, noting that “dialogue was not necessary” in order to tell a story.

“You actually relied upon your body to tell the story,” the “First Blood” actor said, before calling him the higher-caliber artist of the two.

“I saw that there was an opportunity because no one else was doing this except some other guy from Austria, who doesn’t need to say much … He was superior. He just had all the answers. He had the body. He had the strength. That was his character,” he said.

Stallone also admired how the former California governor had endurance and stamina on set and seemingly never got injured during heavy fight sequences.

“I had to get my ass kicked constantly, whereas Arnold, he never got hurt much,” he said. “And I’m going, ‘Arnold, you could go out and fight a dragon and you’d come back with a Band-Aid.’” 

Schwarzenegger couldn’t help but gush over his longtime pal, saying how Stallone’s constant flow of artistry in his films inspired him.

“Every time he came out with a movie like ‘Rambo II,’ I had to figure out a way of now outdoing that,” the “Kindergarten Cop” star said.

“Without Stallone, I maybe wouldn’t have been as motivated in the ’80s to do the kind of movies that I did and to work as hard as I did. I’m a competitive person,” he admitted.

The New York City native got candid with Forbes last year about how he and Schwarzenegger’s rivalry caused them to “really dislike each other immensely” for more than 20 years due to their action films going head-to-head for ticket sales.

“We were … this may sound a little vain, but I think we were pioneering a kind of genre at that time, and it hasn’t been seen since, really,” Stallone said.

“So the competition, because it’s his nature, he is very competitive and so am I,” he continue, “and I just thought it actually helped, but off-screen we were still competitive and that was not a healthy thing at all, but we’ve become really good friends.”

The men shared the silver screen in recent films like 2013’s “Escape Plan” and the first two “Expendables” movies.

Schwarzenegger was a box-office firebomb in the late 20th century with flicks like “Predator,” “Total Recall” and the “Terminator” franchise.

Stallone made a name for himself in Tinseltown with projects like “Rambo,” the Oscar-winning “Rocky” series and “Nighthawks.”