Mickey Rork - Mickey Rourke Bio

Mickey Rourke originally aspired to careers as a pro baseball player and - later - a championship boxer, but did a 180 away from the ring and cut his chops as an actor instead. 

Rourke appears to have both of those qualities; it’s an equation that spells temporary magic on-screen and usually results in terrible suffering off-screen.

When the film was slammed by critics, Rourke defended director Michael Cimino and snubbed all interview requests.  Female audiences went ape for him as a slimy, effeminate cockmaster, and so did the National Society of Film Critics, who gave him a trophy for the role.  The same explosive emotionality that attracts Hollywood executives at the beginning of an actor’s career is the seed of the actor’s own demise when he is inevitably labeled “difficult” by the corporate drones who run the movie business.  We had never seen a male movie star the compellingly enigmatic sexual equivalent of Mickey Rourke as “the Motorcycle Boy.” At the age of 12, Rourke won his first boxing match as a 118-pound bantamweight.  In its obituary of poet Charles Bukowski, the screenwriter of Barfly (1987), “The New York Post” used a photo of Rourke as Henry Chinaski in the film instead of a photo of the poet himself. At about the same time, Rourke official enlisted in the Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez horror compilation Grind House (two horror featurettes with mock movie previews sandwiched in-between); Henry and Mad Dog helmer John McNaughton’s The Night Job, alongside Ray Liotta and Marisa Tomei; and Sin City 2, Rodriguez’s much-anticipated follow-up to the earlier smash.  These qualities, however, while career poison in the U.S., did nothing to hurt Rourke’s reputation in France, where filmgoers adored him.

He was one of America’s sexiest, saddest and most sensitive movie actors — until bad women, bad liquor and bad plastic surgery beat him down.

At the age of 12, Rourke won his first boxing match as a 118-pound bantamweight.

The masochistic connection between this film and Rourke’s subsequent resumption of his boxing career (from 1991-1994) was undeniable, though he continued to appear sporadically in small films and supporting roles.

Philip Andre “Mickey” Rourke, Jr. (born September 16, 1952) is a Golden Globe award-winning American actor, who has appeared primarily in action, drama and thriller films.

He immediately gained a reputation as a perfectionist, agreeing only to work with directors and on projects that met with his high standards.

Sources:
Mickey Rourke | Latest News, Videos, Trailers, Photos, Biography | MTV …