Having quit Hollywood for boxing, Mickey Rourke is acting again. On the release of his film 'Spun', the pugilistic star meets Donald Clarke.
What do we know about Mickey Rourke? He used to be prettier than a baby koala, - but now he looks like a baboon drawn by Ralph Steadman
He is recalcitrant, ill-tempered and a little bit batty. He is impatient with journalists. Oh, and according to the PR minder who escorts me to the restaurant of his favourite Chelsea hotel, he doesn't like answering personal questions. "He likes talking about London," she says helpfully.
On the evidence of my chat with him, none of the above appears to be true.
You wouldn't say he looks pretty anymore – nobody would mistake him for Andrea Corr – but he looks considerably less grotesque in person than he has seemed in his recent movies. Indeed, for somebody who spent most of his thirties being punched in the head by professional boxers, the 48-year-old has managed to keep his features in reasonably good order. Only his lower lip, which has melted into a damp, swollen comma, looks damaged beyond repair.
And, as for not discussing his personal affairs, after only five minutes I find him verbally pummelling himself for the way he has destroyed his life.
He is explaining why his agent urged him to take the role of a recreational narcotics manufacturer in Jonas Åkerlund's hectic LA drugs adventure, Spun, which opened yesterday. "I am taking advice now," he says. "I was never very good at that. When the cart was in my hands I drove it off the cliff. I wrecked my own career. Now I have learned to listen." Throughout our conversation, he keeps mentioning how he has been taught the art of compromise by a cadre of advisors – agents, psychiatrists, lawyers – and how he now is able to do the right thing even when it goes against his instincts. The actor who became one of the 1980s' biggest stars in films such as Diner, Angel Heart and 9½ Weeks, but who then self-destructed into a miasma of bruises and bankruptcy, is learning to behave himself.
Sort of. When it comes to Spun, he stubbornly refuses to play the PR game. I point out that the Irish censor tried to ban the film, which buzzes through the lives of a group of wired Californian drug users. He looks nonplussed. "Inever really read the whole script," he says. "The subject matter didn't appeal to me much." He then concedes that he hasn't even seen the film. Isee. Is he really in a position to promote it then? "As well as anybody. What would be the point of reading the areas I have nothing to do with? I didn't care for it. I didn't find it very challenging . . . "I've seen it, done it, heard it. What is the point? The point for me was the agent wanted me to work with this particular director." Even the new quasi-reasonable Rourke can't quite bring himself to toe the line. One can't help but assume that his tough upbringing forged this cantankerous personality. Born in New York, he was raised in an African-American neigh-bourhood of Miami by a stepfather who he seems to have hated. He saw a number of stepbrothers slip into a life of crime while he put his energy into sports. "My brothers always danced on the other side of the fence," he says. "But Iwould always rather play football or baseball. I remember one coach in particular who used to get at me about my brothers." He regrets never having had the guts to turn pro in one of his chosen sports. Instead, he was drawn to the stage and managed to secure a place at the Actors Studio in New York, arguably the most prestigious drama school in the country. He lived what he describes now as a "monkish" existence: reading, learning lines, slaving at poorly-paid jobs. "It was a piss-poor life, but a rewarding one: rewarding to learn something, to conquer something." After the Actors Studio, the alma mater of Pacino and Brando, Hollywood proved to be something of a disappointment for the high-minded Rourke. In 1982, he was cast in Barry Levinson's joyful Baltimore comedy, Diner, alongside coming talents such as Kevin Bacon and Ellen Barkin, but Mickey felt it was all a little beneath him. "Here I was coming from the Actors Studio and working with a bunch of actors who weren't Al Pacino or Chris Walken. It wasn't deep and solid. It wasn't the kind of work Iwanted to do." But he stuck to it. He was superb in Francis Ford Coppola's Rumblefish and almost made sense of Michael Cimino's misogynistic Year of the Dragon. By 1986, when Adrian Lyne's smutty love romp 9½ Weeks oozed its way into cinemas, Rourke had the world at his feet. He duly kicked the world to smithereens. He spent an awful lot of money in an awfully short space of time. "Yes, Ireally did, didn't I?" he chuckles while lighting another Marlboro. "A lot of people say you must have had a great life, but Ireally don't remember any of it. The money goes quickly and suddenly there is nothing left." Was all the insane spending connected to his impoverished upbringing? Was he making up for all the years of hardship? "Absolutely," he says. "I'd walk down the street and see a gold Cadillac and buy it because Iknew Elvis had one – well, actually it was a gold Rolls Royce. And then there was the entourage, all of who vanished when the money went." As the money began to dry up, the films got worse and worse, reaching a nadir with 1991's Harley Davidson and The Marlboro Man. For somebody who claims to be so principled, he hasn't half done some crap. "Yeah. But I've got a guy to help me now," he says, nodding toward a tidy man in a suit who has sat down beside us. "And Iknow his name. Back then Ididn't even know my agent's name. Iwas more interested in getting on a bike and picking up a strange piece of ass." And then there was – as he would have it – the misunderstanding over his Irish Republican sympathies. Round about the time he appeared as an IRA man in Mike Hodges's A Prayer for the Dying, he made a few ill-judged remarks about the armed struggle and found himself on the wrong side of the British tabloids. Didn't he even have "IRA" tattooed somewhere on his body?
"I'm sorry?" he says, cocking his hand to his ear. "Ican't hear you." He goes on to explain that those outbursts cost him an enormous amount of money, one way or another. After a long pause, during which he considers telling me exactly what he thinks, he decides to remain silent. "Though Iwouldn't have done five years ago," he adds.
Meanwhile, his marriage to actress Car-ré Otis – whose name he can barely bring himself to mention – broke up amid a flurry of angry accusations. And, when things couldn't get much worse, he finally finished off his career by taking up professional boxing at the age of 34. What can he have been thinking? "Not a lot," he laughs. "Iwas just sick of all the games and the politics in acting. Iwanted to be a different kind of actor and when Irealised Icouldn't, Ithought I would do what Ialways wanted to do and take up professional sports." He didn't do all that badly, winning nine fights and drawing two. But he took the real punishment in the gym, where he acted as a sparring partner for boxers of the calibre of Roberto Duran. He endured five nose operations and had to have his cheekbone rebuilt with cartilage from behind his ear.
Eventually his doctor warned him that brain damage was looming and he would have to retire. To Rourke's surprise, Hollywood did not welcome him back.All the tantrums and punch-ups had built up a wall of antagonism. "The doors weren't just shut, they were f---ing slammed and had superglue down the middle of them. Iwas banging to be let in and nobody could hear me." With the help of a psychiatrist, he has begun to modulate his anger and has become a degree less intolerant. The funny, softly spoken, self-deprecating fellow in front of me bears little resemblance to the beast who used to eat journalists alive in the 1980s. But one is always aware of a fury simmering beneath the calm, leathery exterior. Iask him about his current living situation and that anger bursts out. "Isaid to my psychiatrist: 'For two years Ididn't work and all these actors my age who are perceived to be hard men are working.' Iwon't name names, but I mentioned one guy. 'If this f---ing guy had to live the way Ido now, if he had to live off what Ilive in the hovel Ilive in, he'd blow his f---ing brains out." And he continues to berate the current generation of thespian brawlers, using the c-word a lot while making it clear that he could take on any one of them, any time, any place.
Mickey Rourke is terrific. In a world full of mass-produced celebrities he is a red-blooded, eccentric original. Sadly, his current mini-comeback sees him doing little else but camp cameo roles: as a transvestite in Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory, as a fey hoodlum in Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico, as a bloke in a cowboy hat in Spun. He's in danger of becoming a novelty act. "Yeah, Ireally do hate that. Ithink it sucks," he says. "But they are letting me go back to work little by little." So does he feel optimistic? Are the worst days over? "Ihad to lose everything, Ihad to throw everything away to get to where I am today. Iused to think that if Icould see a little daylight, a little crack in the darkness, then that would be enough. The years have gone by and now there is a teeny-weeny crack." He makes a circle with his forefinger. "It's about that big, but before I could hardly see it. One day it will open up. But I've got to earn it."