Part 1
Quick, name a Mickey Rourke movie. Let's see ... he was the arsonist in
Body Heat, right? Small role, real intense? And he had a featured role in
Diner—the popcorn scene, right? Now, what else? Oh, yeah,
9½ Weeks, but that didn't stay in town long, did it? And yet... everyone seems to
know who Mickey Rourke is. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what is known in the brand-name Eighties as an anomaly: a movie star without a hit movie, a famous person who doesn't appear on TV, a million-dollar-a-picture man whose pictures don't make millions.
There is as much curiosity about Rourke as about any actor today. He is a riveting screen presence, rumored to be tough to work with or get close to, a guy who appears to be a genuine hard case. Unlike James Dean, Marlon Brando or Robert De Niro, heavyweights to whom he is often compared, and in stark contrast to the contemporary tough guys of show business, such as Sean Penn—who may be "bad" but grew up comfortably in the middle class—Rourke came up from the meanest of streets. What we may have here, in other words, is the real thing.
Rourke was the product of a badly broken home, uprooted early and raised in Miami's dangerous Liberty City; his main ambition in life was to be a prize fighter. At 19, when it became clear that he wasn't Rocky Graziano, he borrowed a few hundred dollars from his sister and headed for Manhattan. He lived in sleazoid hotels, scuffling up a living with dead-end gigs and, always, banging away in acting class.
The story of Rourke's ascent from Miami street fighter to Hollywood star is as intense and compelling as any he has appeared in on screen. His recollections are peppered with characters whose names, for legal reasons, cannot be mentioned; with deeds that until the statute of limitations expires are best left sketchy. And with a battery of friends who, quite simply, are no longer around. Despite the grimness of the tale, Rourke is ever quick to point out that he isn't telling it because he thinks he had it hard. He's telling it because you asked. And he'd be just as happy to keep his mouth shut.
The irony is, having abandoned his bad old ways, Mickey Rourke, the oldest 31-year-old on the planet, now commands upwards of $1,000,000 a picture for portraying the same breed of troubled tough guy, desperate outsider or brinked-out solid citizen he's either been around or been his entire life.
"With Mickey," says Stuart Rosenberg, who directed him as would-be hood Charlie Moran in
The Pope of Greenwich Village, "you never know if he's going to kiss you or spit in your face. He's got a chip on his shoulder, but he's also got that very rare quality—you'll forgive him for anything."
Indeed. In 1981's
Body Heat, the film that put him on the map, it was Rourke's smoldering edginess, the smile of pained benevolence defusing those gentle killer's eyes, that transformed a minor role as an arsonist into a career-making performance. It was the first of those "Mickey Rourke roles"—parts it was impossible to imagine other actors attempting. In
Diner, a film he stole, there was Boogie, the smooth-talking hairdresser with a soft spot for women and long shots. In Francis Coppola's
Rumble Fish, he played the Motorcycle Boy—heir of The Wild One—a moody biker whose tattoo might have read Born To Read Kierkegaard. Ignored here, the film was hailed as a minor classic in Europe, where Rourke is revered.
In
Pope, Rourke teamed up with Eric Roberts as yet another struggler, a stand-up guy estranged from his woman and gunning for the Mob; and in
Year of the Dragon, he portrayed New York homicide ace Stanley White. Most recently, of course, he starred in
9½ Weeks, potentially the
Last Tango in Paris of its era, in which Rourke introduced Kim Basinger to ever more dangerous sexual games.
But if some readers are scratching their ear lobes and saying, "Gee, I didn't
like any of those flicks," join the crowd. No smash hits here. Rourke will tell you so rather proudly—he's an actor hired by directors who want to work with him, not by studios that want to put his name on a marquee. He doesn't sell, he delivers. And he often confounds Hollywood by not even delivering what the industry might expect. The man nixed
Beverly Hills Cop. And it's no secret that he'd rather hang out with Hell's Angels than with the BMW owners who frequent Helena's and Spago. "If there's an underbelly in Beverly Hills, Mickey will find it," is how
Pope author Vincent Patrick sums up this most un-Hollywood of Hollywood stars.
But it was Larry King, of late-night chat-show fame, who struck fear in our hearts at the prospect of nailing Mickey down. "He's a great guy," said the master interviewer, "if you can get him to talk...."
Duly warned, we sent writer
Jerry Stahl off to find out if Mickey Rourke was real. What we found was that he's even realer than we might have imagined.
Here is Stahl's report:
"I first hooked up with Mickey Rourke in New Orleans, on the set of his forthcoming movie
Angel Heart, where we holed up for a spell in the Fish—code name for the Silverfish, a customized silver snail-back trailer the star inhabits between takes. Lest any gung-ho studio types get a hankering to pop in, the man in charge has had a brass plaque mounted prominently on the front door. Its message: Executive Producers Stay The **** Out—which pretty much puts the kibosh on chat-happy moguls.
"Mickey is by reputation a hard guy—if not an out-and-out sociopath—but it's clear after half a minute with him that the opposite may be closer to the truth. Soft-spoken and unpretentious, Rourke shows the fans who waylay him on the street and the young actors who hit him up for a spot of cash the kind of courtesy a bastard wouldn't bother to fake. Even the paparazzi, bane of the big time, are treated with respect: 'If snappin' a picture of me puts food on their table, then what the ****; snap away, Jack.'
"In New Orleans, we talked from midnight on through the night. Same on the West Coast, where Rourke keeps an apartment that's as close to funky as Beverly Hills zoning ordinances probably allow. The walls are plastered with photographs of boxers, most autographed, lending the place a kind of manly, clubhouse feel, like the back room of a barbershop. The shades are drawn tight enough so that, inside, three in the morning shows up looking a lot like three in the afternoon. The place feels more like a hide-out than like a home, which is the way its owner likes it. 'I got a house,' he says, 'nobody lives in.' This is where he prefers to hang out.
"From the slice I sampled, Rourke lives his life
in extremis. Sleep and solitude are his enemies. He staves off both with a vigilance that might damage a lesser camper. 'I hate to go to sleep; I always feel like I'm missing something,' Rourke explains when asked. Sleep deprivation is his brand of high: 'I can go for two or three days on a cat nap. When I get really zoned is when I get my ideas, when I like to do my writing....'
"Keeping Mickey company is a devoted batch of fellows, much of whose life is spent hanging out with the Man. Entourage is too arrogant a word for this crowd. In Mickey's case, whether they're on the payroll, like assistants Billy and Bruce, or just on the scene, like biker Chuck Zito and the ever-present Lenny Termo, these guys seem connected in a way that leaves mere buddies behind and approaches the Knights of the Round Table.
"Whatever happens to be going on in the romance department—and Rourke is nothing if not discreet—the love you hear Mickey speak about again and again is for his pals, in particular for Termo, 'my best friend.' Lenny is a 50-year-old garment exec turned actor, a soulful New Yorker who, through some happy genetic glitch, seems sired by the secret coupling of Sal Mineo and Zero Mostel. He and Mickey have been together on an almost daily basis for years. And to understand Rourke off screen, you have to understand his relationship with Termo.
"'If they told me they'd chuck a few years off my life, but I knew when I went, Lenny would go with me, I'd do it in a second,' Rourke says with conviction. Termo is equally vocal in his devotion. 'This,' he'll declare solemnly of his soul mate, 'is a great, great man.' Lenny knew Rourke when he had nothing, and Lenny, as Mickey loves pointing out, has nothing now.
"Although Rourke is not known as a comic actor, he and his pal seem like a nonstop existential comedy team, laughing or wailing or propping each other up in the mobile bunker they've created to survive in Hollywood. Life in the Rourke trailer is such that in one typical interview session, first Lenny rolls in—summoned, after 20 minutes, by a call from Mickey: 'I need you, man!'—followed by Chuck, an affable Hell's Angel flashing loud jewelry, followed by another friendly Angel and a couple of nice girls, all of whom appear and disappear into the back room, out the door or in and out of the kitchen for snacks as the night wears on.
"At one point, in what I took as the ultimate gesture of acceptance, Mickey asked Lenny to take his teeth out for me. Showing gums, Lenny bore the brunt of Rourke's torment with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. 'Look at him,' Mickey cackled, 'look at that face! And this man still tries to pick up 17-year-old waitresses!'
"Eventually, between Chuck's demonstrating kick-boxing technique and Lenny's extracting his uppers, things got a little, well, loud. When the lady downstairs called up to complain, Mickey handled the call. 'I'm really sorry,' he told her in his most velvety-smooth voice. 'This is the last night, absolutely. It won't happen again....' Talk about convincing! Forget the toughness, forget the money, forget everything—this man can act, Jack. Just ask the lady who lives underneath him."
playboy.com
American actor Mickey Rourke is said to have turned the air blue during an interview with Alex Zane after he used a cuss word in each and every sentence. 
