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A Second Chance at Life with
Mickey Rourke and The Wrestler
by Jordan Riefe
 It's no secret that Mickey Rourke has always been one of the greatest actors in the business. After being schooled at the acclaimed Actor's Studio in New York, Rourke became one of the most critically lauded actors of the '80s for his roles in such gripping and dramatically emotional films as Body Heat, Rumble Fish, Diner, A Prayer for the Dying, The Pope of Greenwich Village, 9 1/2 Weeks, Barfly, Year of the Dragon, and Angel Heart. In the '90s, Mickey Rourke became disillusioned with the acting business and ventured into the boxing ring where he pursued his dream of becoming a professional fighter. When he retired from the ring in 1995 (with a respectable record, too), Rourke jumped back into acting to give his career another shot. Although Rourke took on both supporting roles and lead characters in lesser profile movies in the '90s, his journey back to the top has been a lesson in life.
After a stellar performance in the Robert Rodriguez - Frank Miller film Sin City in 2005, Mickey Rourke returns to the screen in what is being hailed as his best performance to date in Darren Aranofsky's The Wrestler. Playing an over-the-hill, washed up wrestler who returns to the ring for one last chance at glory and a second chance at life, Mickey Rourke is once again back in the acting spotlight in a film that mirrors his own career trajectory. Already nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actor, Rourke is also receiving praise that could earn him an Oscar.
At the recent press junket in New York for The Wrestler, we were on hand as Mickey Rourke talked to journalists about getting a second chance at life both inside the ring and out.
How beefed up did you get for this thing?
MICKEY ROURKE We had six months of weight lifting. I walk around about 192, had to get up to about 234, 235. So I kept floating between 234, 236. I never had to gain weight before. I always had to lose weight for different sports. I thought, ‘Oh wow, I get to gain weight,’ because we had to put muscle on, not fat. After putting twenty pounds on, it got really hard, because even at 215, 218 is where I kind of petered out, flatted out. It’s like when I used to have to lose weight, I’d come down from 192 to 166 or 167 to fight at 68, and I would always have a hard time at 76, you know, to get down. So it was the opposite thing. I hired this Israeli cage fighter from Israel who was from the army. He was real strict with me. He wouldn’t take any bullshit and that’s what I needed because I didn’t want a trainer who I was going to, like, tell him when I was going to work out. And this guy took his job seriously.
What was that training that you went through?
 ROURKE: It was basic training, but it was the way his mentality was coming from the army and Israel. He was a man that you respect, and he also could kick my ass. He’s like a real serious cage fighter and he’s all about focus and discipline and mixing in the cardio with the weightlifting, because there’s days where I’d go, ‘Can we just lift and not do cardio? Can we do cardio and not lift?’ Because I was sore all the time, all day and all night and I was down in Miami because I always used to go back home to fight - I mean, train while I was fighting. I thought, ‘Let me go back home to do that,’ because it just always felt better. So it was a good place because we have the ocean and we can walk on the beach and then - What started to happen?
I remember, I was running around going out to some nightclubs and I came in all haggard one day and he says, "Come here," he says, "Do you want to look like this the first day they see you in the movie? How do you want to look? We’ve talked about it." He says, "You know, you’re out until five in the morning, chasing women and drinking. You’re not going to look like how we want you to be and you’re going to be disappointed." So I got real disciplined quick with him. And I had one night a week that was mine, you know, because he’s that kind of Jewish dude that he can’t work on Saturdays or something.
Friday.
ROURKE: Friday night, whatever it is. Man, I couldn’t wait for that day to come along. Here’s this dude that’s all tattooed and he’s a cage fighter and yet he was very religious. I respected a lot the way he was as a man. So it was like if I couldn’t do it for myself, I didn’t want to disappoint him because he took it hard and I think I was very lucky to have this guy in my life at this moment. The physical thing, the eating was tough because we had between six and seven meals - small meals throughout the day, and mainly protein at night so it didn’t turn into fat. So it was really regimented. I always lifted light weight in the gym just to get cut up. I never lifted big heavy iron to put on size. A lot of protein shakes, and then we had wrestling practice, which is no walk in the park, you know. Anything that picks you up that’s like, 240 pounds and throws you down, it’s going to hurt you a little bit.
And so these guys are like any kind of doctor, lawyer, dentist, they take several years to learn their profession. They know how to flop, and I was dropping like a lump of shit, like a brick. I didn’t know how to flop. I was landing like, crooked and shit was getting dislocated. I think I had three MRI’s in two months. Darren was screaming at me: "You’re only giving me fifty percent." He didn’t know that I blew out a disc and I didn’t want to tell him. I remember calling my agent and going, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to make it. I’m really hurting!’ I was afraid to go to a real doctor because I don’t like doctors. So I went to an acupuncturist and a chiropractor, and anything but a real doctor because I thought something was really wrong with me and I was afraid to find out. So finally I went to a proper doctor and he just said to me, "You have a blown out L-5 surrounded by arthritis," and he gave me anti-inflamatories and I was good in two days. So I should have done that instead of going through hell.
But that must have been helpful in realizing the character, who’s hardly in the prime of life.
 ROURKE: Well, you know, it did help - The thing is, these guys, everybody ages differently, really. There are athletes that look after themselves. Back in the early days, let’s say the baseball players, for instance, the great ones like DiMaggio and Mantel, Roger Maris, they didn’t lift weights and look after themselves like the guys do today. They didn’t have - a lot of them had second jobs, actually, because they weren’t paid that much. These days, these guys are hitting it all year long. I’d be in Gold’s Gym in Venice and I’d see different athletes in there during their off seasons. Hockey players would come down when it wasn’t hockey season, and everybody stays in pretty good form and they can last longer.
So the age thing, yeah, you can’t do what you could do in your twenties or thirties, but yet you could still look the part. But yet, it’s harder, yes, to get up in the morning. You know, I remember quite a few mornings where I would have to call him and he would have to - because of the extra weight and the bulk I had, my knees, I had football knee in my right knee from high school that acted up again two hundred years later and it was like he would have to do this. And then in the evenings, I used to live in Tribeca, he would get behind me and I would live on a three story walk up, and Daniel would get behind me and push me up the stairs and it would be pathetic looking. And he’d literally - and then in the mornings he’d have to take my arm and walk me down the stairs because my knees wouldn’t hold up from the weight and the exercise and all the little injuries you get from being thrown down.
All the injuries, these guys take a real beating.
ROURKE: Well, it’s a sport unlike any kind of sport that I played or was involved in because they have a real camaraderie with each other. These guys all - they all pretty much get along and like each other, and then they buddy up - The ones who aren’t headliners anymore, they’re in their car 24/7 driving to from city to city to different small venues. So they really know each other inside and out; they go to the same bars, they’re all taking the same steroids, they’re all banging the same chicks, they’re all drinking, you know.
And there are little signals they do. Like if you’re grabbing somebody’s arm and you want to reverse it, they’ll do something like this [motions], which is called an "inky", and that means to reverse it. So there are certain little signs in this world that only they know about it that I found pretty fascinating, because you never do that in a boxing match or a football or baseball game. But these guys - there’s a teamwork and there’s a brotherhood and they’re almost like - they’re entertainers is what they really are. I mean they’re athletes, which I didn’t know. I didn’t really have any understanding or that much respect for the sport when I did the movie, but it grew on me as you know.
People call this a comeback role for you. How do you respond to that?
 ROURKE: Well, comeback thing has taken shape. "Comeback" is two words. If you look that up in the dictionary, you can be coming back from lunch, coming back from losing both legs in Iraq, coming back from a great piece of ass. I mean, it’s got to be defined. You know, the comeback thing has been a process for me over the last 13 years of having to realize that I had to change and change for me - I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to change, but I had to. It was that or I don’t know what. I thought the change could take place over a year, a year and a half, two years, but it took a decade.
And what did you want to change?
ROURKE: Everything. I didn’t have much - I didn’t understand what it was to be a professional, to be accountable, to realize that there would be circumstance and repercussions for my actions if my fuse was lit. I didn’t care back then. It was a matter of respect and principle. And honor, respect, and principle can turn out, as I learned, to be a weak thing instead of a strong thing. But where I came from, that’s the way the men are and that’s the way I always wanted to be. There’s always going to be that in me. I just gotta adjust it and behave and realize, "Wait a minute, if I do that or say that, I could pay the price for that even though it’s the truth."
Even though it is the fuckin’ truth, where I short circuited is when I realized how much of a business it is and how political it is. You can [be] mediocre and be a goddam movie star, for crying out loud, which, like in sports, there’s a lot of gray in the movie business, and I guess it’s always been that way. But for some reason, I was offended by that. But I guess because I studied so hard to be the actor that I am at the Actor’s Studio. Back when Lee [Strasberg] was alive, I got in there and I looked around and I saw Pacino and De Niro and Walken and Keitel, Chuck Gordon and all these people that gave a fuck about their work about being, you know - And then you go out and you start doing it and you realize they just want you to show up and know how to be a businessman. I mean, not all of it, but it just seemed that there was - At the time, that’s where I think the short circuiting began is when I lost respect for what I thought was so precious.
You did these matches in front of crowds who were primed from previous real matches. Did you ever get the sense that they were taking this stuff way too seriously?
 ROURKE: No, we had no money to shoot any other way. We couldn’t afford to bring extras in. We had a five million-dollar budget. They had replaced me once already in the movie because they needed more money for the movie. And Darren [Aranofsky], who is the great director that he is, and I’ve worked with a couple of great directors and I can say his name with Coppola, Cimino, and a couple of others maybe, but he decided to shoot the movie in a very objective, documentary style way with hand-held camera so he could move. It was like commando style, guerilla fucking filmmaking, and he pulled it off. And he took a big chance the way he shot it, and he took a big chance working with me because everybody told him, "You’re making the wrong decision." And I’m very grateful that he stuck by me.
What was the hardest part about playing this role?
ROURKE: It was the physical and the emotional thing to [do], the stuff with Evan and the speech at the end and that kind of crap that I could relate to. It was kind of like shameful in way. Nobody wants to admit that they screwed up so badly with their life. And then, you know, you’re left alone and you’re just yesterday’s news. If you’ve been there, and I’ve been there, it’s no picnic. Randy wants one more chance and he ain’t gonna get it. I’ve been lucky, I got another chance. To separate - I wrote Springsteen a letter. We did this movie in New Jersey, we got a song. I wrote him a really long letter and we’ve known each other a long time. And during my lost years I even lost touch with him, too. And he got back to me after he read it and he knew about Darren and me, and he wrote a beautiful song for us that we couldn’t have afforded. And then I called Axl [Rose] up and Axl gave us "Sweet Child of Mine," and we couldn’t afford that either. So the guys really stepped up to the plate.
Is it almost like you had to reach the bottom, in a sense?
 ROURKE: Me? Me or the character, I get them confused. Maybe without me knowing it, yeah. I mean, yeah, because I was set in ways that were - in wrong ways that weren’t right. There were no rules with me. I didn’t care about repercussions. I just cared about this sort of macho kind of shit thing you grow up with when you grow up a certain kind of way. Even an authority figure, you know, fifteen years ago I don’t know if I would have gotten along with Darren Aranofsky, the way he is. I really doubt. I mean, I don’t know if I would have lasted a day with him, because Darren is in your face. And that’s what I like about him now. I mean, he is the captain.
He sat there the first day we met and he pointed his little pink finger at me and he said, "You’re going to listen to everything I say. You’re going to do everything I tell you, and you’re never going to disrespect me in front of the crew. And I can’t pay you." And I went, "He’s not smart, he’s got a lot of balls and I want to work with his guy. I’m going to give him everything." I knew he had the kind of brains and the ability - I knew why he wanted me for this part. And part of me was a little afraid of that. I didn’t want to revisit those dark places. I knew physically - I knew I didn’t have a clue what I was in for physically, though. I knew what he wanted emotionally and that would be okay, I guess, in time to let him see that. It was the not paying that upset me the most.
What do you mean when you say "what he wanted from you emotionally"?
ROURKE: I mean the thing about dealing with my daughter and having the pain about not being [there] - abandoning her, abandonment issues and feelings of lost, getting older and being put on the bench, losing - Let’s say losing your profession and just being all alone.
Can you talk bout the Oscar buzz? What are your thoughts on that?
ROURKE: Yeah, my thoughts? They change every day. I can’t give you an honest answer because - I mean, look, if it’s about the work, I know what I did, okay? If somebody brings it and they bring a better job than mine, then that man deserves it, whatever the fuck it is. I know what I did and I know what I did in my heart. And if somebody else brought it better, then let’s see it brother. That’s all.
Nineties or eighties?
 ROURKE: I wasn’t in the nineties, I was sitting on the bench.
What did you learn about Mickey Rourke playing this character?
ROURKE: I think that’s why I got the song from Springsteen, because I said to Bruce in the letter - I said to him I’m real lucky that I bumped into people to get advice from. This character doesn’t have that access to, that‘s the only difference, really, because he’s in a real spot, this guy. The best thing that can happen to him is he goes out like a light bulb when he lands on that mat instead of living in that fucking trailer and living in shame. A guy like that, no fucking way he wants to serve up salami. He’s better off to go to the happy hunting ground.
Is Sin City 2 a definite?
ROURKE: I have no fucking idea, and nor do I care.
-- Jordan Riefe
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