Philip Andre "Mickey" Rourke Jr. ( ; born September 16, 1952) is an American actor and former professional boxer who has appeared primarily as a leading man in drama, action, and thriller films. In a film career spanning more than forty years, his accolades include a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and an Actor Award. Films in which he has appeared have grossed over $1.9 billion worldwide.
Rourke's film debut was a small role in 1941 (1979), but it was his short yet powerful performance in the well-received neo-noir Body Heat (1981) that initially garnered attention of film critics, including Roger Ebert, who called it his "breakthrough role" and the "best supporting work" in the film. He then went on to win wider acclaim and a National Society of Film Critics Award for his role in Diner (1982). He subsequently established himself as a leading man, giving lauded performances in dramas such as Rumble Fish (1983), The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), Year of the Dragon (1985), 9½ Weeks (1986), Angel Heart (1987), Barfly (1987), and Johnny Handsome (1989). In 1991, after some critical and commercial failures, Rourke—who trained as a boxer in his youth—left acting to pursue professional boxing. After retiring from boxing in 1994, Rourke returned to acting and had supporting roles in several films such as The Rainmaker (1997), Buffalo '66 (1998), Animal Factory (2000), The Pledge (2001), Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), Man on Fire (2004) and Domino (2005). In 2005, Rourke made a comeback in mainstream Hollywood circles with a lead role in the neo-noir action thriller Sin City.
His comeback culminated in his portraying aging wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson in the sports drama film The Wrestler (2008). For the role, Rourke won the Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actor, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. After this, Rourke appeared in several commercially successful films: Iron Man 2 (2010), The Expendables (2010) and Immortals (2011), before primarily going on to work in direct-to-video productions and independent films.
Early life
Philip Andre Rourke Jr. was born on September 16, 1952, in Schenectady, New York. He was raised Catholic and still practices his faith. His father left the family when Rourke was around six years old. After his parents divorced, his mother married Eugene Addis, a Miami Beach police officer with five sons, and moved Rourke and two younger siblings to South Florida. Rourke has mentioned his stepfather was physically abusive to both him and his mother. There, he graduated from Miami Beach Senior High School in 1971.
Boxing career
Amateur
During his teenage years, Rourke focused his attention mainly on sports. He took up self-defense training at the Boys Club of Miami. It was there that he learned boxing skills and decided on an amateur career.
At age 12, Rourke won his first boxing match as a flyweight, fighting some of his early matches under the name Phil Rourke. He continued his boxing training at the famed 5th Street Gym, in Miami Beach, Florida. In 1969, Rourke, then weighing 140 pounds (63.5 kg), sparred with former World Welterweight Champion Luis Rodríguez. Rodríguez was the number one–rated middleweight (154 lb to 160 lb) boxer in the world and was training for his match with world champion Nino Benvenuti. Rourke says he received a concussion from his sparring match with Rodríguez.
At the 1971 Florida Golden Gloves, Rourke suffered another concussion in a boxing match. After being told by doctors to take a year off and rest, Rourke temporarily retired from the ring. From 1964 to 1973, Rourke compiled an amateur boxing record of 27 wins (including 12 straight knockouts), including a first-round knockout win over John Carver and decision victories over Ronnie Carter and Javier Villanueva, and three defeats. During his boxing career, Rourke suffered a number of injuries, including a broken nose, toe, and ribs, a split tongue, and a compressed cheekbone. He also suffered from short-term memory loss.
His trainer during most of his boxing career was Hells Angels member, actor, and celebrity bodyguard Chuck Zito. Freddie Roach also trained Rourke for seven fights. Rourke's entrance song into the ring was often Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine" (to which reference is made in his film The Wrestler, in which Rourke's character enters his final match of the film to the song playing over the loudspeakers). Boxing promoters said that Rourke was too old to succeed against top-level fighters. Indeed, Rourke himself admits that entering the ring was a sort of personal test: "[I] just wanted to give it a shot, test myself that way physically, while I still had time." Rourke's boxing career resulted in a notable physical change in the 1990s, as his face needed reconstructive surgery to mend his injuries.
Exhibition bout
On November 28, 2014, Rourke briefly returned to the boxing ring and fought 29-year-old Elliot Seymour in Moscow, Russia. It was Rourke's first boxing match in over 20 years. Talks of him being involved in four more matches were released by Rourke himself after the match. He won the exhibition fight in the second round by TKO. The fight is not counted in his professional record since it was an exhibition match. The opponent later stated that he threw the fight, having been promised payment to take a dive in the second round.
Acting career
Early roles
In 1971, as a senior at Miami Beach Senior High School, Rourke had a small acting role in the Jay W. Jensen–directed school play The Serpent. However, Rourke's interests were geared to boxing, and he never appeared in any other school productions. Soon after he temporarily gave up boxing, a friend at the University of Miami told Rourke about a play he was directing, Deathwatch, and how the man playing the role of Green Eyes had quit. Rourke got the part and immediately became enamored with acting. Borrowing $400 from his sister, he moved to New York, working an assortment of odd jobs while studying with Actors Studio alumni Walter Lott and Sandra Seacat. It was under the latter's tutelage, Rourke later recalled, that "everything started to click." Seacat motivated Rourke to find his father, from whom he was separated for more than twenty years.
thumb|right|[[Darren Aronofsky, Rourke, and Evan Rachel Wood discussing The Wrestler]]
During his appearance on Inside the Actors Studio, after the release of The Wrestler, host James Lipton disclosed that Rourke had been selected to the Actors Studio in his first audition, which Elia Kazan is reported to have said was the "best audition in thirty years".
Appearing primarily in television films during the late 1970s, Rourke made his feature film debut with a small role in Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979). He played Ritchie, Dennis Christopher's bullying and ill-fated co-worker in the 1980 slasher film Fade to Black. However, it was in 1981, with his portrayal of an arsonist in Body Heat, that Rourke first received significant attention, despite his modest time on screen. The following year, he drew further critical accolades for his portrayal as the suave compulsive gambler "Boogie" Sheftell in Barry Levinson's Diner, in which Rourke co-starred, alongside Paul Reiser, Daniel Stern, Steve Guttenberg, Tim Daly and Kevin Bacon; the National Society of Film Critics named him Best Supporting Actor that year. Soon thereafter, Rourke starred in Rumble Fish, Francis Ford Coppola's follow-up to The Outsiders.
Rourke's performance in the film The Pope of Greenwich Village alongside Daryl Hannah and Eric Roberts also caught the attention of critics, although the film was not financially successful. In the mid-1980s, Rourke earned himself additional leading roles. His role opposite Kim Basinger in the erotic drama 9½ Weeks helped him gain sex symbol status. He received critical praise for his work in Barbet Schroeder's Barfly as the alcoholic writer Henry Chinaski (the literary alter ego of Charles Bukowski), co-starring Faye Dunaway, and in Year of the Dragon, written by Oliver Stone.
In 1987, Rourke gave what is widely considered to be one of his greatest performances in Angel Heart. The film was nominated for several awards. It was somewhat controversial, owing to a sex scene involving Cosby Show cast member Lisa Bonet, who won an award for her part in the film. Although some of Rourke's work was controversial in the US, he was well received by European, and especially French audiences, who loved the "rumpled, slightly dirty, sordid ... rebel persona" Around the same time, he also wrote his first screenplay, Homeboy, a boxing tale in which he starred. In 1989, Rourke starred in the docudrama Francesco, portraying St. Francis of Assisi. This was followed by Wild Orchid, another critically panned film, which gained him a nomination for a Razzie award (also for Desperate Hours). In 1991, he starred in the box office bomb Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man as Harley Davidson, a biker whose best friend, Marlboro, was played by Don Johnson. In his last role before departing for the boxing ring, Rourke played an arms dealer chased by Willem Dafoe and Samuel L. Jackson in White Sands, a film noir that reviewers found stylish but incoherent.
Rourke's acting career eventually became overshadowed by his personal life and career decisions. Directors such as Alan Parker found it difficult to work with him. Parker stated that "working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do." In a documentary on the special edition DVD of Tombstone, actor Michael Biehn, who plays the part of Johnny Ringo, mentions that his role was first offered to Rourke.<!-- cite DVD commentary would be better. RT bio page is based on Wikipedia --> Rourke has allegedly turned down several roles in high-profile films, including 48 Hrs., Platoon, Highlander, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, The Untouchables, Rain Man, The Silence of the Lambs, Pulp Fiction, and Death Proof.
1990s
In the early 1990s, Rourke was offered and declined the role of Butch Coolidge, which later became Bruce Willis's role in Pulp Fiction. After his retirement from boxing, Rourke did accept supporting roles in several 1990s films, including Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker, Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66, Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory, Sean Penn's The Pledge, and Sylvester Stallone's remake of Get Carter. Rourke also has written several films under the name Sir Eddie Cook, including Bullet, in which he co-starred with Tupac Shakur.
While Rourke was also selected for a significant role in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, his part ended up on the cutting room floor. Rourke also played a small part in the film Thursday, in which he plays a crooked cop. He also had a lead role in 1997's Double Team, which co-starred martial arts actor Jean-Claude Van Damme and former NBA player Dennis Rodman. It was Rourke's first over-the-top action film role, in which he played the lead villain. During that same year, he filmed Another 9½ Weeks, a sequel to 9½ Weeks, which received only limited distribution. He ended the 1990s with the direct-to-video films Out in Fifty, Shades and television film Shergar, about the kidnapping of Epsom Derby-winning thoroughbred racehorse Shergar. Rourke has expressed his bitterness over that period of his career, stating that he came to consider himself a "has-been" and lived for a time in "a state of shame".
2000–2009
thumb|left|upright=0.8|Rourke at the [[2007 Cannes Film Festival]]
In 2001, Rourke appeared as the villain in Enrique Iglesias's music video for "Hero", which also featured Jennifer Love Hewitt. In 2002, he took the role of The Cook in Jonas Åkerlund's Spun, teaming up once again with Eric Roberts. His first collaborations with directors Robert Rodriguez and Tony Scott, in Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Man on Fire, respectively, were in smaller roles. Nonetheless, these directors subsequently decided to cast Rourke in lead roles in their next films. In 2005, Rourke made his comeback in mainstream Hollywood circles with a lead role as Marv in Robert Rodriguez's adaptation of Frank Miller's Sin City. Rourke received awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association, the IFTA, and the Online Film Critics Society, as well as Man of the Year from Total Film magazine that year. Rourke followed Sin City with a supporting role in Tony Scott's Domino alongside Keira Knightley, in which he played a bounty hunter. Rourke played the role of "The Blackbird" in an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Killshot, and appeared as Darrius Sayle in the adaptation of the Alex Rider novel Stormbreaker.
In addition, in 2004, Rourke provided the voice for "Jericho" in the third installment of the Driver video game series. Rourke also appeared in a 40-page story by photographer Bryan Adams for Berlin's Zoo Magazine. In an article about Rourke's return to steady acting roles, entitled "Mickey Rourke Rising", Christopher Heard stated that actors Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, and Brad Pitt gave "animated praise for Rourke and his work".
Despite having withdrawn from acting at various points, and having made films that he now sees as a creative "sellout" (the action film Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man), Rourke stated that "all that I have been through ...[has] made me a better, more interesting actor". Rourke's renewed interest in pursuing acting can be seen in his statement that "my best work is still ahead of me". Regarding first reading the screenplay, he stated that he originally "didn't care for it".
He also spoke on personal concern and hesitance of being in a film about wrestling, for he perceived it as being "pre-arranged and pre-choreographed". As he trained for the film, he developed an appreciation and respect for what real-life pro wrestlers do to prepare for the ring: