CityLife

Micky's back after defeating demons

BACK ON HIS GAME: Rourke

LIFE was very different for Mickey Rourke 10 years ago.

The Eighties star became known for his rebellious persona after starring in films like Angel Heart, Year Of The Dragon and 9 1/2 Weeks.

But he decided to give up acting in the early Nineties so he could begin a professional boxing career.

Within four years, he had to retire from the boxing world due to injuries he sustained in the ring, and wanted to go back to acting.

However, the film industry had turned their back on him and his unpredictable ways.

Devastated, Mickey had to resort to desperate measures.

“I was very fortunate. You do whatever you can to survive,” he recalls.

“I sold all my motorcycles. I used to have nine motorcycles, all kinds of Harleys. After I ran out of motorcycles, I called up a friend and asked for a construction job .

“I thought if I go work in an alley somewhere, no one will recognise me. So I called him but he didn’t reply. I thought, ‘Jesus, I can’t even get a ******* construction job’.”

His former glory did little to help him during that time, which he refers to as his ‘lost years’.

“What I did was 20 years ago,” he says. “You can’t pay your rent on that. you can’t get laid on that, you can’t have a drink on that. You’re yesterday’s ******* news. You get treated differently.”

Amazingly, life is now looking good for 54-year-old Mickey.

While physically he hardly resembles the handsome actor he was in the Eighties, he looks smart in a silver striped jacket and red and gold striped shirt, with rings adorning his fingers.

He chooses to wear sunglasses even though we’re in a dimly-lit hotel room and his slightly unkempt hair has blond highlighted streaks.

Resurrecting

He admits that at one point he almost gave up on resurrecting his big-screen career.

“After 10 f****** years, you go, ‘the party’s over’,” he says.

“It’s a slow journey back. There were small things along the way.

"Sean Penn went out of his way to gave me a day on The Pledge, (Sylvester) Stallone saw me eating in a restaurant one night, paid for my spaghetti and put me in Get Carter. Tony Scott put me in Domino.”

His biggest break came when director Darren Aronofsky cast him as washed-up professional wrestler Randy ‘Ram’ Robinson in The Wrestler, a role that has already earned him his first Golden Globe nomination.

Randy’s comeback story mirrors Mickey’s own life, but the actor bats away suggestions that the role has resurrected his career.

“Everybody talks about that, but when you’ve been out of work for a certain amount of time, a decade or so, you’re kind of wary of it all,” he says.

“It feels very strange. It’s painfully nice. I was on the bench for 13 years, and after 10 years go by, you start thinking all you have is hope.

And when time goes by, you start to think, is it really f****** over like everybody says it is? Especially in a town like Los Angeles, where you’re reminded every f****** day of being yesterday’s news.

“You’ll be buying cigarettes at two in the morning, and some jerk is going to says, ‘What happened to you? How come you don’t work any more?’” You hear it 24/7.

"Or somebody will come up and mention 9 1/2 Weeks or Angel Heart.

"That was a f****** long time ago. It’s like a fighter talking about an old fight at the gym.”

Mickey is full of remorse for behaving badly when he should have been thankful for the earlier opportunities that he was offered.

“I’m at a point where I behaved so terribly when I had a chance, I wasn’t responsible, I wasn’t professional,” he explains.

“It wasn’t that I was misunderstood – I behaved terribly because I had a fuse burning inside of me I couldn’t put out.

Authority figures

"I wasn’t happy and I didn’t know how to do that until I went and got the information to understand why I behave the way I do with authority figures and what have you – and only until you do that can you make a change.

“I thought I could change in a year or a year and a half, I didn’t realise it was going to take 10 years of working on it consistently, and realising there are repercussions. Before, I didn’t care about the repercussions – there were no rules.”

Aside from the emotional challenges to play Randy, the twice-married actor-screenwriter had to bulk up with the help of an Israeli ex-army commando and martial arts champion.

“It was a long process of over six months of putting on weight,” he recalls.

“I had to put on muscle, not fat, and I had never done that before. I had to lose weight over a 12-week period of time – 20 pounds and I thought that was murder.

"It was like a never-ending gymnasium for me.

Gym

“Since I’ve done the movie, I haven’t walked into a gym – I’ve just done weights at home. I just can’t go into a gym yet because it was hell.”

And while he is poised for glory once more, Mickey is reluctant to see this as the start of better things to come.

“They’re (job offers) not running through my door. I did a lot of damage out there, so we’ll see,” he says.

You get the feeling that there are dozens of juicy stories waiting to be told about his hell-raising years, but Mickey reveals he has no plans to pen his long-awaited autobiography.