Mickey Rourke - The Dark Side of Fame with Piers Morgan (2008) The Wrestler

when this hollywood hot shot was at the top of his game in movies like nine and a half weeks in angel heart he looked like he had it all for about three years he was the hottest thing on earth hollywood loved it all over the world men wanted to be him and women well they just wanted him so why did the 80s favorite bad boy get dumped by hollywood and in the process there's everything he had people actually say hey didn't you used to be in the movies jesus christ and after a lost decade of punch-ups extraordinary plastic surgery and burning every bridge in tinseltown can he really make a comeback nikki how are you i guess you're the man huh well you're the man i've never felt quite so apprehensive before interviewing anybody yeah i said somebody who knew you and i said what's he like you brought he's just dangerous well it's not you know it's just you feel dangerous these days mickey [Laughter] on a scale of probability what is the chance of you hitting me in this interview it depends what you say that's what worries me i love your bar it's my friend's part of social easter it's where i come to relax you just hang out here yeah it's uh pretty low-key it's it's close by and the guy that runs owns the place is my best friend let's go back to the start mickey talk to me very quickly about your upbringing you were born in new york the exact year appears to be something of a mystery well that's that's that's because you know like in uh athletics or business i'm in they use that against you so i don't talk about it so you know you've never really revealed your relay no but that's that's so that's something i'm not going to talk to you about either part of movie star mystique isn't it well it's like you know you know you know as soon as a running back in the nfl hits 30 years old they're over so they put up they put a stigma on it so i don't really think it matters describe to me your upbringing how would you describe it my upbringing well you know i don't want to beat a dead horse but let's say if i had a choice of living where i grew up and having to do it all over again i'd prefer not to have been born at all right how's that sound yeah that sounds quite dramatic yeah well there's a lot of stuff a lot of things that went on that i'm not even comfortable talking about um it was just unusual it was very violent it was uh it was crazy i mean you were born in new york yeah and at the age of seven your mother just took you to miami you didn't really know what was going on but your father was no longer part of the part of your life and you got a stepfather right and you were well you were abused you and your brother through this period would that be a fail way of describing it it was it was it was there was craziness going on but it was violent it was very violent yeah and you were beaten well i started saying this stuff i don't even want to talk about that you know it was the guy it was a very crazy situation and uh it was nutty i think what he went through as a child was uh very heavy he never got over his mother leaving his father and following her mother to florida to an area that was very different and and losing his father being brought up in a step family with four new brothers and a policeman's stepfather was tough on the young rock when he was seven years old this was a very sensitive little boy who was wide-eyed and very trusting and not not knowing how to protect himself at all people saying oh he's a mad drunker he's a druggie you know [ __ ] you you know that's a very easy hook to just label you if they don't know the real the real deal you know i lived in a house where my you know my mother turned her head to everything that was going on and a lot of [ __ ] was going on and you know you you don't realize it until you're older that you know the [ __ ] sticks with you and to the extent that it stuck with me i did i had no clue growing up in a rough miami neighborhood had toughened mickey and although he loved sport particularly boxing he was failing in the classroom so when he left school in the early 70s the now streetwise rook gravitated towards the lowlifes and petty criminals of south beach he may well have joined their ranks permanently had it not been for a sudden win at the age of 19 with no other real prospects he moved to the artistic hub of new york with a vague uninformed plan to become an actor did you see acting as an escape route was it something you'd always wanted to do how would you describe your attraction to the world of acting i was actually planning on a career in boxing and i got hurt at a very young age where i had to take a year off because of a couple concussions and i kind of segued accidentally into the acting thing and then i found it kind of interesting you know i i uh i was living in some hotel in the village and there was an older man there and he would give me books to read and sort of i i found the books interesting like many aspiring actors mickey took cheap rooms at the hotel martin in greenwich village where he was befriended by theater enthusiast carl montgomery i was the night manager of the hotel marlton when mickey checked in and he was there for about three years during the period when we first really got to know each other quite well carl took him to see plays and gave him biographies and books about acting which mickey devoured there's something in my instincts told me that he was going to be one of the finest actors of that period i really felt that he had the potential and i never felt that way about anyone else as you read about it what did you begin to think about the profession about hollywood about movies my favorite actors back then were like you know charles bronson you know i didn't know who marlon brando was in montgomery clift or you know no i had no clue and then i'd this guy would give me these biographies to read and other things and then i go oh this is what it's about encouraged by friends like carl montgomery vicki began to apply himself his dream was to become a member of the actor's studio the prestigious home of method acting famous for introducing the world to movie legends such as marlon brando and james dean but the x miami beach bum was far from ready for that so for six years he worked two or three jobs at a time and paid for private tuition with active studio drama coach sandra c cat he wanted private sessions and he would come for privates and give me a handful of cash and i found out several years later that sometimes he wouldn't eat for two or three days in order to pay me the actors studios method requires students to dig deep into their own emotional experience and relationships and for his entrance audition sandra suggested his most difficult challenge i had to do a scene where i'm talking to my father and i couldn't relate to a father because i didn't see mine since i was six but i had missed him you know and always like had stuff in my head about him so sandra said to me she says how badly do you want to get into the active studio and she knew she knew i really wanted to get in there she said you're gonna have to go find your father [ __ ] you know so i actually went to find him and found him the day before i did the test and then i was able to relate to somebody that other than some kind of beast i mean you actually went into a bar yeah and there he was you knew exactly who he was i went into a restaurant where i remember he and i used to go in a white castle and have uh hamburgers and he happened to be sitting in the place that i walked in amazing yeah i mean that's a freakish coincidence yeah and how was the first moment of the reason i followed him out on the street and walked up next to him and i just stepped down on the curb and uh i said are you so-and-so and he said yeah and i said well i'm so-and-so and he said i oh i always knew you'd come by one day there's already said and then we went and we went to this bar and uh he bought me a dinner and he had 20 screwdrivers and uh he gave me 50 bucks and i i left and went did my test the next day did you ever see him again no no he died about a year later he drank himself to death stunned by the intensity and honesty of his performance the audition panel at the actor's studio inducted the awkward young rock immediately there are some great people there some great young ladies i couldn't i walked in i couldn't believe i see al pacino and you know harvey keitel and chris walken and i'm going [ __ ] this is the place man did you feel suddenly electrified by this i really did yeah and that was thrilling to have mickey then to be a member of my artistic home but i just said one day film is a really is really important for you his talent had blossomed in new york but if mickey was to become an international movie star he was going to have to head west you then make the move to hollywood yeah talk me through that i mean this is yeah exactly i mean in an odd way everything is like going downhill after that but i mean when you were making that move it must have been to you at the time the great dream well my acting teacher forced me to do that because i was still having a hard time walking and communicating with somebody i didn't know i'd go in sometimes have casting sessions and there wouldn't be a word said they go okay well thank you very much you know so that process was not easy for me that was that was that was the that that something at the studio they didn't teach that they didn't teach the politics they didn't teach the business side and i i wasn't educated or sophisticated or experienced enough to understand that it was a business and that it was political but that is quite significant for you because there's no doubt as your career went on the the big barrier for you was that you were not particularly savvy about the way hollywood really worked no i had no clue and if i could do it all over again i'd i'd i would have paid more attention to that so you touch down in a place that you don't really like but you realize it's the center of your world you've got to be there yeah to play well i was bouncing in the transvestite nightclub i mean it was like that was my job you know and back then all the transvestites were on this [ __ ] called angel dust so you'd hit them over the head with a baseball bat and they keep on coming you know so things are going well you're basically you're a bouncer and a transvestite nightclub and then i got a joke i finally got this the body heat movie yeah which was a big film yeah and um well they actually said you've got the job i mean you must have been well i went and stunned well they offered me a certain amount of money and i said no [ __ ] that i said i want such and such my agent said mickey every young actor in hollywood wants his partner said i still want this much money he goes you're working in transvestite nightclub i said i don't give a [ __ ] and they gave me the extra 500 that i asked for but by doing that you would have immediately put their backs up right you'd immediately signal yourself as trouble i think that was the beginning of the end i think the beginning was the beginning of the end you just wouldn't play the game wouldn't compromise not after i now that i could say after what i had been through there was no compromising with anybody under any circumstances because of your upbringing yeah yeah and your agent thought you were just being ridiculous couldn't understand that in a million years but you got the money got the money and what was it like making that first big film i went man if this is what they call acting i'm i'll be here for a long time i thought it was you loved it yeah but it was easy it was comfortable to do it was easy it was a walk in the park anytime you try decent crime you got 50 ways you can [ __ ] up if you think you're 25 and then you're a genius and you ain't no genius there's a small part he plays in body heat which is just extraordinary it's a tiny tiny part and it's just utterly mesmerizing you remember who told me that ain't no smoking in here he was doing stuff that no actor at the time was doing i wouldn't even be on the street if it wasn't for you to me it was just fresher and dangerous after his small but attention-grabbing role in body heat in 1981 the office came thick and fast in the first half of the 80s mickey clocked up a string of great movie performances in diner alongside other newcomers like kevin bacon and steve guttenberg compolar's rumble fish with matt dillon on the pope of greenwich village with eric roberts and daryl hannah the press were calling this fresh group of young actors the brat pack and their leader was the dark brooding mickey rourke who was being hailed as the next brando he's an artist that's constantly giving the audience an aesthetic arrest that's rare the the initial mickey that i saw in diner was a really cool young movie star and was the coolest looking guy i've ever seen creative people like adrian line on nine and a half weeks and barry levinson and alan parker uh got it and got it quick and had to have him he had a sort of roughness around the edges which just made his sort of appearances on screen so powerful and kind of very sexy so after body heat things are going well for you the offers start coming in the movies are there and you become for one of a better phrase the next hot thing in hollywood what what is that experience like i'll help real close did you feel like the shackles were off yeah yeah i'm a young movie star it's happening and i'm gonna love every second yeah i did i had a crazy time and it was literally just i mean i hope the answer is relentless sex drugs and rock and roll was it absolutely yeah the x miami beach bomber come a long way he'd married his first love fellow actor deborah fewer in 1981 but by the mid-80s was living the indulgent life of a movie star bachelor he was being paid huge amounts of money for spending it just as fast buying a beautiful home in beverly hills and spreading it around his growing entourage when you're hot in hollywood you can do whatever you want and mickey did you have obviously this tag hellraiser how much of a party boy were you what was the reality of a night out with mickey rory in those days it was out of control it was different places to go every night beautiful women all the drugs no i was more more never really got into the drugs that much later on dabbled in some [ __ ] but it was never about the drugs you know it was just going out and chasing the [ __ ] were you good at it depends on what movie you had out which was the best pulling movie you ever made must be nine and a half weeks probably i mean how many women did you have on the back of nine and a half weeks yes enough [Laughter] the super stylish erotic tale of obsession was rorke's first romantic lead and co-star kim basinger nudity explicit sex scenes featuring a blindfold and the content of a fridge proved that strawberries and whipped cream can be used well for more than just trifle that was outrageously sexy and turned him from a sort of indie cool guy student favorite into a housewives favorite you know everyone wanted a piece of mickey rook the film was the cultural phenomenon of 1986. the soundtrack dominated the airwaves and whether they've seen it or not everybody was talking about its sizzling stars well i remember going to the first british press screening for nine and a half weeks and i remember afterwards the reaction of all the journalists and everyone was convinced that he was going to be a star but every woman just was jaw on the floor because they couldn't get over how sexy he was this he he was a real sort of paul newman james dean richard gere type sex symbol and i remember that film vividly i mean it played a massively helpful part in my in my squirring as we call it england at the time yeah i mean every woman wanted to be associated with mickey rourke every bloke wanted to be like you it was the dream role for you really i didn't know that for at the time are you proud of that movie i don't know i don't think about that movie why probably because there's not a day it goes by that somebody doesn't come up and mention it it's the one defining film yeah guys will bring it up in the street usually when they're drunk oh man when i you know oh god i gotta hear this again you know what's the the most repetitive question you get on nine and a half weeks what do you think i've got a fair idea yeah okay god you know say no [Laughter] out of a league of many young hopefuls it was mickey rourke who stood out it wasn't just his acting ability everything about him had a kind of 80s x factor that the media lapped up if you think of the sort of reinvention of levi's budweiser 1950s americana iconography that was big really big uh and the industry wanted um a sort of face to put to that and that was mickey rourke not only was he very sort of acceptable in a sort of matt dillon way he was cute but he was tough he was a proper proper film star for about three years he was the hottest thing on earth mickey followed up nine and a half weeks with angel heart a movie directed by sir alan parker when he looks low-key he's even in control you know it's like he he makes her a very relaxed set acting opposite robert de niro it wasn't like two actors at all it was like two prize fighters you know not a physical jab but a but a wise crack or or an ad-lib or something mickey was never going to be beaten in the ring by de niro because he it meant a lot to him he said i want to prove that i'm as good as he is he used to say it to me every day we didn't see so you were living the movie star dream yeah did it feel as good as you hoped it might be yeah but as success came the anger came and the be more defiant game and more destruct destructive with demanding you know how did that evolve easily um it just it was just it was just there it just appeared you felt that it was almost you come into a very sincere world well it was like i couldn't pick a pick up a check i couldn't pay for a [ __ ] drink everything was thrown at you yeah yeah and rather than enjoy it you actually felt resentful because in the beginning in the beginning i did enjoy it but as time went by i it brought something up in me that i didn't i didn't know what it was and how did it manifest itself in terms of the business in terms of the movie making just an arrogant defiance and uh a bit you know i didn't have any uh clue about how to be handling myself in a responsible professional way that all went out the window because i thought i can act and that's all it counts with questionable judgment he put art above profit and turned down the lead role in several popcorn classics he passed on top gun beverly hills cop rayman and platoon and by doing so he handed crews and his other bat packed stable mates blockbuster careers while they were counting the cash he was struggling to make his mortgage payments so around this time your life although it appears to be at an all-time high is quite quickly unravelling disintegrating yeah and the central reason is that the angers come back the resentment and your complete refusal to compromise to hollywood politics you just will not you know it wasn't so much the politics it was everything anything that was an authoritarian type figure you know if someone looked at me sideways i would go berserk [Music] in 1986 mickey rourke hit the uk to make his first big flop controversial ira movie prayer for the dying and when things didn't go his way he publicly slated the film and its producer sam goldman jr that coupled with his outspoken views on the northern irish troubles created the tabloid scandal that tainted his reputation forever prayer for the dying was strange thing for him to do we were kind of surprised that he took it there's this kind of irish connection that he has his politics were a bit wishy-washy he wasn't really that aware of the situation so i think he annoyed a lot of people in ireland because he took positions that she probably hadn't really studied i mean were you being deliberately provocative do you think i don't want to get into it give me the the headline just political stuff it's really a subject that i don't talk about anymore i learned my lesson was it was about the ira yeah yeah you were being sympathetic to the i don't know i was being sympathetic toward my character and it got blown out of proportion and i didn't i wasn't educated enough in any way to handle the consequences of what was you know something very volatile at the time in what way well getting banned from the uk and i didn't realize that if the uk didn't buy your film you know wouldn't take your films you could hardly work i mean you even took on publicly samuel goldwyn which is sort of sacrilege in hollywood i mean when you did that did you realize what you were really doing uh yeah do you regret that um not so much taking on him i really give a [ __ ] about him um it was other things that happened that i allowed to happen um that caused me difficulty uh there were consequences i mean mickey everyone loved him he was the bad boy he was outspoken but then he picked a fight with hollywood royalty in the form of sam goldwyn jr and that was it he was out you can't do that there is an unwritten rule in film that you you're all in it together it's pretty hard to make a film even a bad one and actors are the ones who end up on the chat shows and doing the interviews so they're in a very cocky position and actually what they're doing is slagging off the work of a hundred people if you've made someone a star if you've made someone rich and famous and comfortable if you've given them a career and they turn around five minutes later and start abusing you they don't like it why would you the general rule is if you don't like the movie then you just shut up and uh unfortunately mickey didn't the press had smelled blood and were now paying for more so the industry who clearly also had enough of the bad boy protege removed any protection they'd afforded him and let him have it open season was declared on mickey rourke's reputation if it had been difficult and was making hit movies he'd still be a star these days but because his movies weren't hits and he was becoming increasingly difficult he was dropped as the 80s croaked so did mickey's career the top scripts in hollywood were no longer landing on his lap his tinseltown home was repossessed and he was in no position to be choosy about the work he could get if you look at the work that then followed he got more and more difficult and the work uh was not so great either some of those rules that he was in just they're almost unwatchable i mean i sat there groaning sometimes in 1990 he makes wild orchid with his first marriage over mickey makes ex-model co-star carrie otis his second wife an occasion of a tabloid celebration not with mickey in the picture their tempestuous relationship would drag rorke's name even further into the mud there was drugs and guns going off and fights they were always doing something scandalous and every week they were tabloid fodder you did through this period get married dude carrie yeah who was possibly the love of your life yeah do you still feel that way uh yeah what happened there uh i met somebody who was as damaged as me and it all held reckless and she was wild and crazy and two damaged fiery people colliding yeah did it ever stand a chance already do you think not at that time now i look back at it i wouldn't be here talking to you right now today if it probably was if she probably didn't leave it forced me to to to change because i didn't feel i had to change or needed to change i think mickey rook's lowest point was probably you know when he was with carrie um he he kind of had a bit of a personal breakdown ended up being carted off to a sort of an institution for a while came out and allegedly beat up carrie and she went to the police and she never did press charges but he was tarred with that brush if a wife beat her and that was kind of where it all went totally wrong for him there were stories of assault and abuse and all the rest of it that you were whacking her around is that fair no it didn't happen how would you describe your relationship she got [ __ ] up on heroin uh the only destruction that i did was on a couple guys that she was getting high with problem but the bad choice that i made is i just walked into a public place and and did my business with them and what would your business be i just put the guy in a hospital for a few days and that got in the papers and stuff like that as far as any violence that happened with her um she can't even remember it because she was so whacked out so do you remember it no i don't remember because i wasn't involved in it because these were peeled people that were supplying her with stuff and they ended up doing the business and i took the fall i've been very hurtful to you to even now have to be asked about i kind of not really because it's never been resolved she's never i mean she can't remember she was in such a funk i mean she i think she knows because she told me the name of the people that did it and do you still see her no i have nothing against her i still care about her and you know if she needed my help i'd be there for her you know but uh i think she's doing fine have you been in love since in love no do you think you will um i don't know she was a hell of a woman and a lot to match up to you know so something had to fall out of the [ __ ] sky do you think you'll ever be able to move on probably from her probably not that's tough i'm tough so you're banned from britain yeah you've fallen out with the hollywood hierarchy you're now tainted as trouble and i think so yeah and in typical mickey wrought fashion your reaction is spectacular you just say you know what i just got on my motorcycle and kept riding but you you retreated back to where you started boxing yeah i mean a startling thing to do yeah i had realized at 34 you know i had some demons about when i got hurt and as an amateur and i never turned pro and i went you know what i'm going to take some finished business yeah it was unfinished business that i felt bad about and what was the reaction to your decision well i was only going to do it for a year i didn't realize it was going to go on for five years you must have had everyone trying to persuade you to oh yeah well there wasn't ever there wasn't everyone had left by that time there was no one left in his voice no everybody abandoned ship it was just me story started filtering through that you know mickey wrought was this boxer which i just thought how why you know he was a mega star he was massive in hollywood you know what why has he done this a lot of actors go off the rails and don't become professional boxers i think he thought that being an actor was a bit of a wimpy thing to do and he wanted to sort of get real and be gritty and and show everyone that he was a tough guy but it was quite sad because it just backfired because he wasn't very good at it he was somebody who didn't need to be bashed around the head mickey rourke boxed professionally from 1991 until 1994. i watched mickey's last two fights and i just wanted to die for him i think at the time he was like he was like 40 and he was boxing and i watched him get his ass kicked and wonder why is he doing this and then i realized that um mickey is the kind of guy who comes from nothing so everything is an accomplishment i think he could have saved a lot of wear and tear on the old face because he got pummeled but um look how many guys how many guys have done that and he's done it did it give you a bigger rush than you've been getting from movies yeah dude that's the reality is yeah yeah it's something i've i've always enjoyed sports much more than making movies so while everybody else thought you'd gone mad abandoning your hollywood career for getting back in the ring it seemed an obvious thing to do well it was like i wanted to do or to do it one more time before i became like a [ __ ] geriatric you know i wanted to compete one more time at a high level and went as far as i could up until i started getting some memory loss and i failed my neurological twice and um they said you should stop right now and i had just gotten offered a they said if you win three more top fights you could move up to cruiserweight and fight for a wbo title fight so i mean that's all i thought about and then i told the doctor and they i said how much are they gonna pay you i said well i mentioned the figure he says you won't even be able to count that if you have three more fights really yeah would winning a wbo title have meant more to you than winning an oscar yes you see in that answer i i get what it's all about i don't think you were mad it was your passion yeah you just happened to be a guy who loved his boxing who happened to be very good at acting yeah when you try to come back to movies yeah i mean the game had moved on for you it was gone yeah i mean apart from anything else your face had been pretty badly mangled well you know i had five nose operations it broke my cheekbone i had two concussions broke my hand my hands just never be the same probably but what it did the boxing years it took a famously handsome face and turned you into a bit of a train wreck right i remember this picture landing on the showbiz desk and we were like has he gone mad why he was gorgeous he already had the most brilliant wonderful characterful face what on earth would anybody want to do that it's a complete amount of mystery to me the late 90s saw the rise of the weekly gossip magazine that signaled the new age of intrusion and celebrity bashing a regular page filler brought out of this was the when plastic surgery goes wrong feature and their poster boy well it was mickey rourke the plastic surgery it's a way out it's it's it's almost it's embarrassing almost it's embarrassing and so bad if you're gonna do it do a good job the press thought the surgery looked more than just reconstructive it struck me that he was trying to change himself wasn't he become something new you know like a butterfly but failed i saw him at something in london not long after he'd had it done the first bout and um it was sort of truly terrifying you know frightened the children i've noticed since i've worked in hollywood that there is this ludicrous obsession with how you look with all things aesthetic right do you care that you get regularly dissected now as plastic surgery feature here's mickey rawkins no i mean if i had you know stuff blown out of proportion about operations i've had on injuries i don't you know i don't read it i don't give a [ __ ] what somebody has to say some you know that town's town built on envy so they're going to say what they want to say and believe what they want to believe and but when you try to get movie parts again presumably then it mattered i think my reputation at the time was so devastatingly bad that um my movie career was pretty much over before i left to go back to boxing when you finished the boxing you had i've read some quite a harrowing account from you of your life the sort of life in the wilderness yeah for 10 years where you had no money you had no real friends to cut you didn't have much to get up for other than your dogs um and probably the most sad moment for me when i read your story was how you would try and get tables and restaurants and yeah there was it where you couldn't pay before you couldn't pay for a drink yeah and i remember going off on some guy one time when i couldn't get a table in the place and i said what's the matter i don't have a [ __ ] movie out this week you know where i would say it's worse to to be a husband than it than to like never been anything before because when somebody goes like what happened to you you know like people actually say i'd be standing on a 7-11 buying a pack of cigarettes and the guy would say hey didn't you used to be in the movies there's like six people in line i'm going yeah a long time we're gonna come and then somebody oh mickey rook i'd go jesus christ i think and you know it was like you know going through that kind of thing did he did all this behavior that the restaurants not giving you tables all that kind of thing there was only one one but did it confirm to you what an insincere shallow place hollywood is really not really because by that time i was talking to a guy who was kind of helping me put the pieces back together this is the therapist you said yeah and i realized that it wasn't any producers or anybody in hollywood i'm you know i'm the one that brought the curtain down on myself you know i i jumped off the mountain at first i mean it was one of the great self-implosions in hollywood history listening to you it seems obvious to me that that very destructive childhood almost certainly cost you your career right your marriage your fortune i mean every every good thing that came your way in the end got chewed up by the damage that was there i don't like to use it as a crutch i'm what i'm using as a crutch is the damage that came out of it damaged me in a way that i couldn't function without self-destructing and um ruining what i was trying to achieve and the hardest thing for me is uh it's like when my ex-wife said to me you know you have to change you know and then i realized man i kind of change or my muscle just blow my [ __ ] brains out did you ever think of blowing your brains out sure you actually have moments when you thought i'm going to kill myself well let's just say you know it crosses your mind how would you have done it i have no idea but you see because my my kid brother was sick with cancer his whole life trying to live there was a big part of me i wouldn't do it because it just only mainly because of him you know because he would fight so much to beat his illness and want to be alive and i'm going to sit there and blow my [ __ ] brains out no i wouldn't there's no [ __ ] way i'd do it mainly because of him was joey the the one person you were closest to in your life yeah and was his death the most difficult thing you've ever had to deal with yeah yeah when it's your brother and you die you know he's in your arms and you see the light go out you know that was uh that was um you know people could say oh death is a beautiful thing it's now it's a lonely ugly terrifying horrible thing it's there's nothing i don't find there's no beauty about it at all do you think he'd have been proud of the way that you've pulled yourself back together well you know joe died about two and a half years ago three years ago and i remember him saying hey bro he said you changed man i never thought you did i'm sitting there looking at him and he's dying and he's very happy to see the change by the turn of the century it looked increasingly unlikely that filmmakers were ever going to consider the hollywood has been for anything again but movies have changed and the people making them have changed too filmmakers like mr rodriguez and quentin tarantino grew up admiring mickey work those people are not dancing to somebody else's tune and neither is mickey so they can make they can make music together for sure in 2005 hot movie director robert rodriguez transferred the graphic novel sin city to the big screen and cast mickey serial killing anti-hero marv the film was a success and introduced a whole new generation to rorke's albeit prosthetically challenged on-screen talent sin city was certainly um his best role in years in a in a very very long time i'm so pleased because thank god he had a good role for a change i was fascinated by him in sensitive to see how strange he looked pretty special i think in a weird way but did it feel good to be back you know people say that to me and it's like when you've been out of work 13 years you don't ever feel like you're back what does it feel like i don't know i think in the beginning i think when you're really young and you first start out you hit and things are going smooth you know you're there and it's never going to go away and then when it goes away you know maybe it goes away for six months or a year but after you know a decade you know you start to go maybe they're right maybe i am through do you feel fortunate to be back making movies at all after what i did to everybody yeah and can you enjoy it more this time i do yeah i really do you feel less anger less resentment i don't feel any at all now you're actually enjoying making because i realized i'm i was the i was the monster not not everybody else these people i was screaming out in the dark to come out and [ __ ] get it on with plans in place for a sin city 2 mickey's marv may well be back and his latest role in the wrestler is tipped to be the best work of his career he closed off his future with his plastic surgery because he became funny looking and then his plastic surgery relaxed and he looks like mickey rourke again so i think his future is wide open and i think he's gonna he's gonna blow all of our minds he's probably got the redemptive role in him like um brandon when he did the godfather he's on his way back and you know why he's on his way back because he was always great and he looks kind of strange but it doesn't matter in a weird way it doesn't matter because inside is a phenomenal actor and he always was and i think that if he's doing well right now that's the reason he's just a really really good actor i mean would you like to have a movie big enough now to stop the endless procession of people coming up to you and talking about nine and a half weeks you know what the nine halfway thing doesn't really it's it's almost it doesn't anger me or it's almost embarrassing because it's like i don't get it you know i mean do you feel a huge pressure when you're with a woman now to produce fruit and stuff [Music] do they try and exert that pressure you know no no for old time's sake no not at all no some of the women i'm with these days don't even remember that movie it's great to have you back thank you it's great to be back for another drink cup of coffee

Channel: Cool City Cactus

Views: 703,225

Rating: 4.7917285 out of 5

Keywords: Mickey Rourke, Alan Parker, Shades, Angel Heart, The Wrestler, Rumble Fish, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Year of the Dragon, 9½ Weeks, 9.5 weeks, A Prayer for the Dying, Barfly, Johnny Handsome, Wild Orchid, Desperate Hours, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, White Sands, The Last Outlaw, Spun, Thursday, Animal Factory, The Pledge, The Expendables, Picture Claire, They Crawl, Buffalo '66, Bullet, Eric Roberts, Homeboy, Iron Man 2, spun, boxing, 9 1/2 weeks, point blank

Id: ZYr-o_LhSiQ

Length: 42min 46sec (2566 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020