AceShowbiz - Hollywood hard man Sylvester Stallone prefers painting to acting - because he is much happier with a brush in his hand. The action star, 63, has been dabbling in art in his spare time for 30 years and recently sold one of his works for a massive $50,000.

And Stallone admits he prefers life as a painter, because he can always control the end result. He tells Britain's The Times newspaper, "Movies are a vision dependent upon three or four hundred people to accomplish it. So there's great compromising. And so much is lost in the translation. So when you get up there, it's maybe 40 per cent of the way you envisaged it. Because of the finance thing, and the actor doesn't interpret it properly. Or the director isn't on form that day and he missed the whole point.

"Whereas painting is all you do. It either soars or it crashes. There's no-one to blame but one person. I find that the more unhappy you are, the more confused you are, the better your art is. Happy art, it just doesn't seem to work for me."