http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e10/JamesGrec/MickeyRourke.jpg



Before he blew it, before he threw his career away, Mickey Rourke was one of the most promising actors of his generation. Go back and watch his early movies. Body Heat, Rumble Fish, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Barfly. Young actors like Sean Penn, Matt Dillon, and Nicolas Cage would visit the sets of his movies just to watch him work. They worshipped him. And so did the critics. In her review of 1982's Diner, Pauline Kael singled out Rourke, writing, ''He has a sweet, pure smile that surprises you. He seems to be acting to you, and to no one else.'' As 9 1/2 Weeks director Adrian Lyne put it, ''If Mickey had died after Angel Heart, he would have been remembered as James Dean or Marlon Brando.''

But Mickey Rourke didn't die. He just destroyed himself.

In the mid-'80s, as his career was starting to soar, Rourke got a reputation for fighting with producers. He would show up late to sets. He wouldn't bother to learn his lines. Acting came so easily to him that he didn't take it seriously — he didn't respect it.

And when all that didn't kill his leading-man prospects, he went one step further, taking a break from acting to become a professional boxer. It was a bizarre decision, one that would eventually lay waste to his once-handsome face. Four years later, when he retired from the ring because he'd been so battered that his health was in danger, Rourke returned to making movies. But he rarely seemed invested. He'd take crappy parts just for the money — money that he'd turn around and blow on $5 million houses, a fleet of custom-made motorcycles, and an entourage of hair-trigger bodyguards and yes-men who would just as often get him into trouble as keep it away. By the time he walked off the set of 2001's straight-to-video Luck of the Draw because the producers wouldn't let his pet Chihuahua appear with him in a scene, it was official: Hollywood was done with Mickey Rourke.

That's where his story should have ended. A career death wish followed by a fade to black. The next round of articles should have been his obituaries. But his story didn't end there. Because just when it seemed like he was finally down for the count, a director came along who chose to ignore Rourke's crazy past. He promised the actor that if he humbled himself and worked like he hadn't worked in 20 years, he could get back on top again. And this is where another Mickey Rourke story begins.





On the coffee table in Rourke's apartment in New York City's West Village, there's a messy tableau of hunting knives, candles, Zippo lighters, a framed photo of one of his four Chihuahuas, an antique pistol (his publicist made him put away the others), a plastic bottle of honey in the shape of a bear, several bottles of prescription medication, and a syringe full of vitamin B12. For the past year, the actor has received monthly house calls from a doctor, who, after testing his blood for mineral deficiencies, administers an IV drip replenishing whatever the actor's immune system is short on. The procedure lasts about an hour, during which time Rourke slumps on the sofa with a catheter in his arm while he and the doctor watch TV. He finds the ritual comforting.

Nevertheless, on this cold October night, Rourke is battling a nasty throat infection. His voice is a whispery croak, which may only get worse now that he's starting to talk up his latest movie. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler is a low-budget indie about a past-his-prime brawler itching for one last shot in the ring. He can't pay the rent on his trailer, the daughter he abandoned years ago wants nothing to do with him, and his poor health is taking away the last thing he has left: wrestling. What makes the film rise above Rocky Balboa cliché, though, is the haunting parallel between the character of Randy ''The Ram'' Robinson and the actor portraying him. When The Wrestler won the top prize at this year's Venice Film Festival, instantly there was talk about a Mickey Rourke comeback. Now, on the eve of its release in the States on Dec. 17, buzz is building that Rourke might even win Best Actor.

Suddenly, after 15 grim years in starring-role exile, Rourke is someone people want to hear from again. They want to know what happened. Have him recount his flameout. Make him walk the comeback stations of the cross. He gets this, and actually craves the opportunity, because deep down he knows it's what it takes to get back to where he once was.

Tonight, he's dressed in skintight black jeans, a pair of handmade denim cowboy boots that look like they cost a fortune, and a black vest with nothing on underneath. His chest is tanned and muscular and hairless. There's a tattoo of a fleur-de-lis right below his pecs. Between drags from a Marlboro Red and sips of an herbal aloe vera drink for his throat, Rourke recounts his unlikely biography. ''This movie is the hardest film I ever made and the best film I ever made,'' he says. ''If I knew it would take me 15 years to come back, I would have done things differently. People say, 'Hey, this is your comeback.' But comeback from where? Fifteen years of holding on to hope. Because living in hopelessness, you'd rather be dead.''

Asked if he dislikes talking about the past and the potentially brilliant career he squandered, Rourke shakes his head. ''No, because I f---ed up real bad. I knew nothing about business or politics. I didn't even know they were in the equation! But it's a game, and we all have to kiss a-- in life. I didn't know it then. A lot of the actors who are successful, you look around, these guys are college boys — Ben Affleck, Matt Damon. Me, I just thought you're either great or you suck! I'm not saying I was great, but I knew I was on my way to being great.''

Rourke is 52. His face is a relief map of scars. Despite rumors that plastic surgery is partly responsible for his altered features, Rourke denies that he's ever had work done. ''Somebody said to me the other day, 'You don't look like you used to.''' He laughs. ''But who does? I mean, when I was boxing I had six nose operations, I had cartilage taken from behind my ear, I had short-term memory loss, I've got an equilibrium problem, I don't have as many teeth in my head as I used to.''

No, Rourke is not the man he once was. But if he were, then The Wrestler wouldn't be nearly as poignant as it is. Talking about the similarities between Rourke and Randy ''The Ram,'' Aronofsky says, ''There were scenes that I think were extremely painful for Mickey. He felt the shame of the character very deeply. Very deeply. Mickey knows what it's like to fall from a great height.''







Rourke came up in the late '70s through the Actors Studio in New York, where he immersed himself in Method acting, a technique that famously taps into the pain of one's past. He was working as a bouncer at an L.A. transvestite club when he auditioned for his first big film, 1981's Body Heat. The sultry noir, starring Kathleen Turner and William Hurt, showcased Rourke in a small, knockout role as an arsonist who advises Hurt's character on how to get away with murder. ''I was looking for a young De Niro,'' remembers the film's director, Lawrence Kasdan. ''Every young actor says they want to be the heir to Brando or De Niro, but when Mickey read for the part, he genuinely had that quality.''

Next came Diner, followed quickly by Rumble Fish, The Pope of Greenwich Village, and Year of the Dragon. It was a dazzling early run. Rourke managed to be sexy, dangerous, and slightly damaged — a combustible combination for many women in the audience. ''There was something about him where you couldn't take your eyes off of him,'' says Diner director Barry Levinson. ''He was this flashy guy, tough, but audiences responded to the sensitivity under it all. I think that's the side Mickey would like to hide. And his trying to hide it makes it even more fascinating.''

By the time the steamy erotic thriller 9 1/2 Weeks came out, Rourke was bristling at all of the attention being paid to his looks. He hated the idea of being seen as a heartthrob. ''That was when that whole pretty, sexy thing came about,'' says Rourke. ''Which I resented. I never saw myself that way, and I ran from it like wildfire. I don't know why.'' Rourke shakes his head. ''I don't...know...why.''

Rourke wanted to be known for his acting, period. When he got the chance to share the screen with De Niro in 1987's Angel Heart, Rourke psyched himself up, training like a contender getting ready to enter the ring with the best. Director Alan Parker says that in his climactic confrontation with De Niro, Rourke inexplicably clutched an ice cube in his fist the whole time. ''It was electric to watch,'' says Parker. When the director yelled ''Cut!'' there was a puddle next to where Rourke was standing. He looked like he'd just gone 12 rounds. ''The best thing about acting was the competition,'' says Rourke. On the wall of his apartment, there's a photo of him with De Niro on the set. Rourke's beaming like a kid.

But when that kind of challenge wasn't there, Rourke admits he was just as likely to act up as act. He thought his talent was enough, diplomacy be damned. In 1987, Barbet Schroeder directed Rourke in Barfly, in which he played a character based on wino poet Charles Bukowski. It's a harrowing performance, skid-row Shakespeare. Two decades later, Schroeder has nothing but praise for Rourke's talent: ''He was magical, the greatest of his generation.'' But he also recalls Rourke as being self-destructive and petty, citing a follow-up project that he worked on with the actor for two years before Rourke dropped out without explanation. ''I remember I put a note on his front door saying that I would never speak to him again,'' says Schroeder, ''and I haven't.''






Rourke sinks back into the black leather sofa in his living room as Loki, his favorite of his four pet Chihuahuas, settles on his lap. He says that hearing old stories like this is tough. His eyes begin to well up. Rourke insists he's spent the past decade in therapy trying to make sure these things never happen again. When he started, he was going four days a week. Now he's down to two. He attends church, prays every day, and says the rosary several times a week. But it's only when he's asked about his childhood that a deeper source of Rourke's pain comes gushing out.

At first, he refuses to talk about his father. But over the course of two hours, he gradually reveals that the man who walked out when he was 6 physically abused him. ''That's where it all went wrong,'' he says, starting to get choked up. ''I lived in an area [Liberty City, a poor neighborhood of Miami] where you could get away with murder with what you did to your kids. I don't like talking about this because I don't want to put myself in the victim category, but when you're 5, 6, 7, you can't fight back. And I never got over what happened.''

Rourke is crying now. He seems like he wants to talk about it, but he's sobbing too hard to get the words out. He gets up and walks around the room, deeply breathing in and out, dabbing at his eyes. ''I thought I knew what pain was when my mother and father split up,'' he continues. ''That's why I've never been able to have a birthday party since I was 6. Because my father never came. I never saw him again... Well, I saw him once. He drank himself to death at 47. The year after I met him again. I introduced myself. It was like a big boulder off my shoulder. He was a former bodybuilder. But he didn't look like that no more.''

Rourke begins pacing the room, ''My psychiatrist says you live in a state of shame, so it's almost like you want to be invisible. I wasn't educated enough to understand that the stuff that happened to me when I was little affected me. And when I got older I put on this armor that was so scary and so self-destructive, and I wore that armor like a badge of courage because of the smallness I still felt.''

As he sits down again and reaches for a tissue, a tattoo on Rourke's left shoulder reading ''Carré forever'' comes into view. Carré is, of course, Carré Otis, the fashion model who became his wife after they met on the set of 1990's Wild Orchid. When her name is brought up, Rourke stands and says he'll be back in a minute. He returns with an arty black-and-white photo of a beautiful brunette in a white T-shirt. ''Thirteen years ago, this was the most important thing in my life,'' he says, holding the picture of Otis.

The marriage lasted six years — six years of wild ups and downs, including Rourke's arrest for spousal assault in 1994 (the charges were later dropped) and Otis' subsequent spiral into heroin addiction, which she has openly discussed. ''Carré was thunder and lightning,'' he says. ''We both came from very damaged backgrounds. We had some of the greatest times in the world and some of the most painful times in the world.'' The two are no longer in touch.









Rourke laughs recalling the honeymoon they took, driving out West in his '69 Road Runner convertible, sitting on the curb outside a motel in Utah and drinking beer. But his smile vanishes when he talks about how the relationship unraveled. ''I lost my wife, my house, my career,'' he says, again choking back tears. ''I spent a long time dealing with getting my wife off heavy drugs. And I got myself into some s---, putting some people in the hospital who were giving her drugs. So I lost movies over that. But it was my wife! If you're going to give somebody in my family bad drugs, you're gonna deal with me. I'm not going to say, 'No, I'm an actor.' I could have dealt with it differently, but I didn't.''

In the early years of his marriage to Otis, Rourke's wild living and free spending began to catch up with him. He started taking jobs for the paychecks, such as the $2.6 million he got for 1991's critically reviled action comedy Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. The list of cinematic lows during that period also includes Desperate Hours, White Sands, and the TV movie The Last Outlaw. ''I'd do some piece of s--- for the money and then show up late and f--- everything up,'' he says. ''More than half the movies I've made I didn't want to do. I bought a house that was way too expensive, cars, entourage, women, jewelry. If you ain't ever had it, once you get it, you spend it as quick as you can. Simple as that. I ain't never seen no Brinks truck at a funeral and there ain't gonna be one at mine.''

Disillusioned with the dismal movies he was sleepwalking through, in the early '90s Rourke made that decision to semiretire from acting and take up boxing — his passion as a teenager. He thought he might finally find peace — or at least oblivion — in the ring. ''I liked the discipline of it,'' he says. ''The technique and the science of it, to me it was therapeutic.''

Over the next five years, Rourke won eight professional fights. ''I'm not the kind that's going to go down real easy,'' he says. ''There ain't no quit in me. I could whack guys out with either hand. I was three fights away from a world title fight and then I failed my neuro [neurological test] so bad they went, 'Mickey, you have to stop now!''' Rourke had taken a beating in the ring, breaking his nose and hands and shattering his cheekbone. When asked if boxing was perhaps a subconscious attempt to destroy the good looks that had made him famous, he pauses to consider the question. Finally, he says, ''There may be some validity to that.''

When Rourke chose to give up boxing in 1995 rather than run the risk of suffering permanent brain damage, he found himself back at the bottom. His pricey house had been repossessed, his marriage was in ashes, and his movie prospects were bleaker than ever. He'd gone from costarring with De Niro to sharing the screen with the likes of Dennis Rodman and Jean-Claude Van Damme. By the end of the '90s, Rourke even had to sell off his motorcycles, one by one. ''Every time I would go broke, I would sell another motorcycle to get me by for about six months,'' he says. ''And then I got down to one motorcycle, and I called a friend at a construction company and I said, 'Can you get me a job out in the Valley where people won't know me?' He thought I was kidding and hung up the phone. I couldn't even get that!'' For the past few years, Rourke says that he even relied on handouts from friends, including one who gave him $200 a week so he could eat. ''Two hundred bucks will last you at McDonald's,'' he says.

But just then, a younger generation of filmmakers showed up, such as Sean Penn (The Pledge), Steve Buscemi (Animal Factory), and Robert Rodriguez (Sin City). They'd been early idolizers and longtime fans of Rourke's, and now they found themselves in a position to give him another chance. ''Mickey is at least an intermittent reminder that truth and talent are the most stubborn of gifts,'' says Penn. ''Mickey's taken baseball bats to them, blowtorches, blackjacks, and bullwhips, and he just can't get rid of them. There's a beautiful heart inside that guy.''

So thought Aronofsky, when he decided to offer Rourke the lead in The Wrestler.







On a cold March evening six months ago, Rourke was standing backstage at the Baker Theater in Dover, N.J., in a pair of lime green spandex tights. His hair was long and blond. He was freakishly pumped up with muscles, like 10 pounds of sausage in a five-pound casing. It was day 35 of The Wrestler and Rourke was getting ready to shoot the climactic sequence in the film, in which his character, The Ram, enters the ring before his final fight, grabs the microphone, and gives a farewell speech to a sea of hollering fans.

''I got a few words I'd like to say to all of ya,'' he begins. The Ram, tearing up, describes to the hushed audience how much he's given the sport and how much the sport has taken from him in return. How people said he was all washed up, how he wasn't pretty anymore, how they treated him like garbage. It's a hard scene to watch, and harder still to draw the line between where The Ram begins and the man playing him ends.

Back in his living room six months later, Rourke's eyes well up again when he says that he wrote that speech himself. ''I can't watch it,'' he says of the scene. ''I haven't watched it. Maybe three or four years down the road.''

At first, Rourke wasn't eager to put himself through the emotional wringer that he knew would be required for The Wrestler. ''I knew Darren would want his pound of flesh,'' he says. In fact, Rourke says he was ''relieved'' when, at one point during the development process, Aronofsky said he'd have to find another star for his film. Every financier Aronofsky approached told him the same thing: that Mickey Rourke was too risky, too unsympathetic to carry The Wrestler. He had no choice but to offer Rourke's part to a more bankable actor. That's when Nicolas Cage came aboard. ''They said they needed a $20 million man,'' says Rourke, ''and I understood the politics. I have nobody to blame but myself. And Nicolas did a very gentlemanly thing. He called me up and said, 'I don't know what happened, but I just want your blessing.' I said, 'You got it, brother.' He didn't have to make that call.''

But Aronofsky didn't give up on Rourke. Eventually, he worked out a way to make the film on a smaller budget with Rourke as his star. And now, with more than just money on the line, but also his reputation and faith in his instincts, Aronofsky sat Rourke down and told him flat-out that he would not put up with any crap. Looking back, Rourke says, ''I like somebody who's going to tell me 'This is what it is, you're going to do it my way or let's not make the f---ing movie.' I thought, Damn, this motherf---er must be talented. So I'll break my a-- for him.''

Rourke trained with an Israeli cage fighter for three months. During the shoot, he tore a ligament in his shoulder and injured his elbow and knee. He needed three MRIs. And for one scene, he slashed a razor across his forehead in the ring to get the crowd riled up by the sight of blood. ''Wrestlers call it gigging,'' says Rourke, pulling his hair back to show off the scar.

It's then that Rourke hints at another conversation he had with Aronofsky before they started shooting, in which the director promised that if he worked harder than he ever had, he'd get nominated for an Oscar. ''That's a made-up story,'' laughs Aronofsky. ''I told Mickey if he did his work, then people would recognize it. I think Mickey interpreted it however he interpreted it.''

Back in his apartment, Rourke is still thinking about that conversation. He knows that even after he's gotten his story out, the Academy may not be ready to embrace a guy who had so much potential and threw it away. But Rourke has always been a fighter. And he won't go down easily. ''Listen, winning an Oscar ain't about performance,'' he says. ''There's a lot of politics involved. So if it's about politics and all that other stuff, that's one thing. But if it's about acting...''

Rourke doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't have to. The smile on his face says it all.

hasn't he been "back" for awhile since Sin City?