The Expendables star Sylvester Stallone not stopped by injury

Back for More – injuries can’t keep Stallone off his feet for long.

“If you hear any squeaking it’s not my shoes, it’s my back.”

It’s quite a way of starting a conversation, but then Sylvester Stallone has always done attention-grabbing introductions since bringing his debut screenplay, Rocky, to the cinema in 1976.

The reason for the warning of the likelihood of strange noises during our interview is because the legendary actor has recently had a steel rod put in his back. It’s the result of an accident sustained on the set of Expendables 3.

Ever the optimist, Sly actually sees the injury as a good thing.

“I can usually grade the quality of a film by the intensity of the injury,” he smiles.

“When I did Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot I never got hurt.

“When I did Rambo and the first two Expendables films I broke my neck, dislocated both shoulders and I shot the last third of First Blood completely wiped out, physically.

“So when I ended up flat on my back on this film I thought, ‘Hey, this is going to be a great movie’.”

If you have a fancy for ammunition-filled movies like they used to make in the 1980s, with seemingly indestructible muscle men in the lead roles, then The Expendables franchise, packed full with the heroes of yesteryear, will be right up your street.

On the face of it the third movie appears to be more of the same.

Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Antonio Banderas and the recently released from prison Wesley Snipes join the fray and the team are sent to a former Soviet republic to stop weapons of mass destruction falling in to the wrong hands.

But this instalment tones down the graphic nature of the violence and adds some members to the cast who weren’t actually alive when Stallone and Schwarzenegger were smashing box office records first time around.

“It’s a necessary evil,” laughs the 68-year-old of the addition of twentysomethings Ronda Rousey (a female MMA fighter), Victor Ortiz (a professional boxer) and Twilight’s Kellan Lutz.

“Let them get beat up for a while,” he jokes.

“I thought we were at a point where we needed to upgrade and retool and bring in actors who were known for their physicality. Bringing in the new generation also gave us an opportunity to do the parental thing.

“All children think they know all the answers but then they get into trouble and the parents have to come in and save them.

“My ideal is that some of these characters, the young Expendables, could go off and do their own movie and then come back together for the big blockbuster with us all,” continues Sly, revealing there are already advanced plans for an Expendabelles movie with an all-female cast.

“Maybe that’s a pipe dream to make us the earthbound Avengers but when I started doing franchise films in the early ‘80s I was ridiculed.

“But I always saw the potential of certain characters to grow and I see the same with The Expendables.”

His longest running franchise, Rocky, went to six films and also made its mark on Sly in a different way.

“Of all the stunts I’ve done I think going 15 rounds with Dolph Lundgren for Rocky IV was the toughest.

“It was filmed over six months, so it was just one long stunt and Dolph was unbelievably powerful. That’s the work I’m most proud of as I know I could never come close to doing that again now.

“And Cliffhanger stays in my mind because I’m afraid of heights I don’t even like wearing cowboy boots if they’re too high! And yet I was dangling off a ledge 4,000ft up. All I could think was ‘How did they talk me into this?’”

The Expendables 3 is at cinemas from Thursday.