Arnold Schwarzenegger “hated” Sylvester Stallone until they went into business together.

The action stars had an ongoing feud at the height of their success in the 1980s and 1990s.

But when the Fubar actor was launching his Planet Hollywood restaurant chain, he was approached and asked if Stallone could be part of the venture. Schwarzenegger said he realised it was time to end the “craziness” between them.

“We hated each other,” the 77-year-old told Andy Cohen on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy this week.

“We were kind of attacking each other and doing nasty things and saying nasty things about each other and all these stupid things.

“All of a sudden, I started working with Robert Earl and Keith Parish to create the Planet Hollywood franchise, those restaurants.

“The next thing I know is I get a phone call from my lawyer, who was also Sly’s lawyer, he said, ‘Schwarzenegger, is there any kind of room for Sly in Planet Hollywood?’.”

The Terminator star recalled thinking: “That’s actually a good idea, because it could bring us together. And I wanted that. At that point I had grown out of my craziness.”

The restaurant chain launched in 1991 in New York City with the backing of the future Expendables co-stars and other famous faces. Schwarzenegger is proud of how they “made it work”.

“Sure enough, we made it work,” he said.

“Bruce Willis became part of Planet Hollywood, Whoopi Goldberg became part of Planet Hollywood, Chuck Norris … It really was kind of an international cast.”

Planet Hollywood once had more than 60 locations around the world, but now has just three restaurants and four hotels.

What has endured is the relationship between Schwarzenegger and Stallone, 77. The two friends recently reflected on how their rivalry was “very helpful” to both their careers.

“There’s no two ways about that: He was very helpful in my career because I had something that I could chase,” the former California governor said in a joint interview for TMZ Presents: Arnold + Sly: Rivals, Friends, Icons.

“[I was] the one who started this whole thing … by opening up my mouth, saying stupid things, being competitive.”

It’s not the first time Schwarzenegger has addressed the years-long feud. In 2023, he told The Graham Norton Show that the rivalry “got out of control” in the 1980s and 1990s as the two actors emerged as action movie icons with The Terminator and Stallone’s Rambo.

“We were movie rivals, but we took the competitiveness to the extreme – we each had to have the best body, we had to kill more people in our films and we had to have the biggest guns,” Schwarzenegger said.

“It got out of control and we tried to derail each other.

“We started flying around the world together to promote [Planet Hollywood] and we became fantastic friends. He is a great human being and we are now inseparable.”

This week, Stallone said Schwarzenegger had emerged as “something to motivate me”.

“Because he is, dare I say it, competition, a threat, whatever word you want to use,” he said.

“As soon as I saw him it was like bang, two alphas hitting. If we walked into a party we’d be staring at each other for a few seconds and then ‘I gotta get that guy. He didn’t do anything wrong but he will’.”

-with AAP