Rourke steady
Few actors have been knocked off their feet more than Mickey Rourke, but as his gong-grabbing turn in The Wrestler proved he's still a riveting screen presence. After years on the ropes, it's good to be back, he tells Damon Wise
• Damon Wise
• The Guardian, Saturday 6 June 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jun/06/mickey-rourke
"Fucking hiccups," grumbles Mickey Rourke. "Fucking hot tea. It's not working!" In the 1980s, the hiccups alone might have sent the former wild man into a rage, let alone the failed attempt at a cure. But today, Rourke is quite literally in a good place: he's in his New York home, he has several major movies to keep him occupied, and somewhere around the house are the Bafta, the Independent Spirit Award and the Golden Globe he won for his powerhouse performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson in Darren Aronofsky's poignant drama The Wrestler.
One thing missing from this collection, however, is the Oscar. The one with his name on it never made it to him; it went to Sean Penn for his witty, waspish portrayal of Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant's biopic of the gay activist who transformed US politics.
"Y'know," he says softly, "I didn't think I was gonna win, because of Proposition 8 and the whole gay marriage thing that was going on in California. But it wasn't just that. Sean did a hell of a job with his character," he says, despite reports which Rourke denies, that he'd dismissed Penn's performance as average. "I know we got the Golden Globe, the Independent Spirit and the Bafta, but that's still not the people in the Screen Actors Guild, if you know what I'm saying. As soon as Milk won for best screenplay, I knew the party was over."
If anyone should know when a party's over, it's Mickey Rourke. In his prime he was a major movie star and pin-up. At his lowest he ended up broke and alone. "I wasn't making shit for over 15 years," he admits. "I was living in a $600-a-month flat. I had a Mini Cooper, and I couldn't even afford to fill it up." But through it all, he never gave up on two things: his wit and his wardrobe.
"Absolutely not," he snaps. "I always kept my clothes, y'know. Or I'd do something so I could keep dressing. I have a really good relationship with a lot of designers. I like Gaultier, Billionaire and Cavalli. Billionaire's been very generous, and even Dolce. My shoes are made by the best guy in the world, Jean-Michel Cazabat. I get a lot of custom leather stuff made. In fact, I'm designing my wardrobe right now for a couple of days I'm doing as a favour for Stallone on his new movie The Expendables."
Gaultier made the suit Rourke wore for the Oscars, and even a matching outfit for his dog, Loki. But about that night, Rourke only really remembers the sadness: Loki never got to wear it. "It was a double-edged sword, y'know," he says softly. "I was so grateful to be there. Now, I wasn't surprised to be there, but there was also the fact that the two people in my life that meant the most to me - my grandmother and my brother - weren't around any more, and I lost my dog six days before. There was a big part of me that felt like I got hit in the head with a baseball bat. I was sitting there going, 'What, is this all for me?' But everyone in life who I loved was gone.
"It was just really rough when I lost my brother," he recalls. "That was devastating. My brother, my granny and my dog. But that's the way it works, y'know? You're gonna lose people, and nobody gets a pass on it. So I'm not angry or bitter about it. At the Academy awards it bothered me, in a quiet way. But shit happens. Look what Patrick Swayze's going through. So I'm grateful for what I have. I'm thankful. And I worked very hard just to make my way back."
For many people, mostly journalists, the return of Mickey Rourke was simply a convenient excuse to rehash his amazing story. After all, wasn't he "back" with Sin City in 2005? But the difference between then and now is that Rourke really is back, and reconnected with his game. After The Wrestler, he explains, "I got the most touching letters and communiques from everywhere."
He sighs: "From Emma Thompson, who I've never met, to Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and Jon Voight. I got a letter from Kim Basinger, who I hadn't heard from in 20 years. I just thought, 'Wow.'
I mean, for me, I don't think I could've had a better compliment than a few words from Al Pacino."
The raves in the press hadn't bothered him. "I don't read anything they write about me," he says. "A guy years ago told me, 'If you don't read the bad shit, you can't read the good shit.'" But the encouragement from his peers was something else, and when he went to make his first film after all the hype for The Wrestler - a remake of the Georgian thriller 13 Tzameti - he began to worry. "I thought, 'How am I gonna bring to my next performance what I did to the Wrestler?' And as soon as I went into 13, I think, in the first two days, I did better work than I did in The Wrestler. So it's about maintaining that work ethic."
And Iron Man 2, in which he plays Tony Stark's tattooed Russian nemesis, Ivan, is possibly the biggest movie yet in Rourke's new career. For Rourke this means going to Russia, drinking vodka and visiting jails to study prison tattoos and find his character's tics. "I decided to do half my role in Russian," he beams, "and that's hard because the Russian language doesn't roll off the English-speaking tongue very easily. I spent three hours a day with a teacher, and after two weeks I know four sentences! Let me see, it's sort of like... 'Yezzamee menya... Yezzamee manya obott... Er, nemaboootty menya...'"
This goes on for quite some time. "It means," he says, finally, "If someone kills me, don't wake me up, because I'd rather be dead than live in your world."
But the land of blockbuster movies is not somewhere Rourke plans to stay long. "I'm not gonna rush out and see the next Batman, I'm not big on formula movies. I don't like all that Spider-Man shit."
So after Iron Man 2, Rourke will go straight to the set of Stallone's second world war movie The Expendables - the aforementioned favour.
"Stallone, when I was a flat broke and I could hardly pay for a bowl of spaghetti in a restaurant, gave me a couple of weeks on Get Carter, and that paid my fuckin' rent for eight months."
But right now he's most excited about a script he's been polishing for a movie he's making with Larry Clark, which he's been giving his undivided attention."There's a great secondary role," he says, "and I want to attract somebody really interesting. So I spent about three hours last night working on this character, who could be considered one-dimensional, giving him layers, and unpredictability and charisma. I'd love to do it with Mick Jagger," he says. "I'm trying to get Mick to do the other part. He's someone I look up to, always have, I think he's the man, and I want to have that come across, because my character is coming out of prison after 25 years, and this guy's his old friend, and he's waiting outside to explain things to me. So I wrote this scene where he's saying [adopts a Jagger-esque drawl] 'It ain't the same, mate. It's not just smash, grab and third-rate pimps on the street.' So if I could get somebody of Mick's calibre interested, that would fun."
He pauses. "Yeah, that would be fun," he decides, excited, invigorated and - best of all - back in the moment. "It'd be fun to go to work with a legend."
Few actors have been knocked off their feet more than Mickey Rourke, but as his gong-grabbing turn in The Wrestler proved he's still a riveting screen presence. After years on the ropes, it's good to be back, he tells Damon Wise
• Damon Wise
• The Guardian, Saturday 6 June 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jun/06/mickey-rourke
"Fucking hiccups," grumbles Mickey Rourke. "Fucking hot tea. It's not working!" In the 1980s, the hiccups alone might have sent the former wild man into a rage, let alone the failed attempt at a cure. But today, Rourke is quite literally in a good place: he's in his New York home, he has several major movies to keep him occupied, and somewhere around the house are the Bafta, the Independent Spirit Award and the Golden Globe he won for his powerhouse performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson in Darren Aronofsky's poignant drama The Wrestler.
One thing missing from this collection, however, is the Oscar. The one with his name on it never made it to him; it went to Sean Penn for his witty, waspish portrayal of Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant's biopic of the gay activist who transformed US politics.
"Y'know," he says softly, "I didn't think I was gonna win, because of Proposition 8 and the whole gay marriage thing that was going on in California. But it wasn't just that. Sean did a hell of a job with his character," he says, despite reports which Rourke denies, that he'd dismissed Penn's performance as average. "I know we got the Golden Globe, the Independent Spirit and the Bafta, but that's still not the people in the Screen Actors Guild, if you know what I'm saying. As soon as Milk won for best screenplay, I knew the party was over."
If anyone should know when a party's over, it's Mickey Rourke. In his prime he was a major movie star and pin-up. At his lowest he ended up broke and alone. "I wasn't making shit for over 15 years," he admits. "I was living in a $600-a-month flat. I had a Mini Cooper, and I couldn't even afford to fill it up." But through it all, he never gave up on two things: his wit and his wardrobe.
"Absolutely not," he snaps. "I always kept my clothes, y'know. Or I'd do something so I could keep dressing. I have a really good relationship with a lot of designers. I like Gaultier, Billionaire and Cavalli. Billionaire's been very generous, and even Dolce. My shoes are made by the best guy in the world, Jean-Michel Cazabat. I get a lot of custom leather stuff made. In fact, I'm designing my wardrobe right now for a couple of days I'm doing as a favour for Stallone on his new movie The Expendables."
Gaultier made the suit Rourke wore for the Oscars, and even a matching outfit for his dog, Loki. But about that night, Rourke only really remembers the sadness: Loki never got to wear it. "It was a double-edged sword, y'know," he says softly. "I was so grateful to be there. Now, I wasn't surprised to be there, but there was also the fact that the two people in my life that meant the most to me - my grandmother and my brother - weren't around any more, and I lost my dog six days before. There was a big part of me that felt like I got hit in the head with a baseball bat. I was sitting there going, 'What, is this all for me?' But everyone in life who I loved was gone.
"It was just really rough when I lost my brother," he recalls. "That was devastating. My brother, my granny and my dog. But that's the way it works, y'know? You're gonna lose people, and nobody gets a pass on it. So I'm not angry or bitter about it. At the Academy awards it bothered me, in a quiet way. But shit happens. Look what Patrick Swayze's going through. So I'm grateful for what I have. I'm thankful. And I worked very hard just to make my way back."
For many people, mostly journalists, the return of Mickey Rourke was simply a convenient excuse to rehash his amazing story. After all, wasn't he "back" with Sin City in 2005? But the difference between then and now is that Rourke really is back, and reconnected with his game. After The Wrestler, he explains, "I got the most touching letters and communiques from everywhere."
He sighs: "From Emma Thompson, who I've never met, to Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and Jon Voight. I got a letter from Kim Basinger, who I hadn't heard from in 20 years. I just thought, 'Wow.'
I mean, for me, I don't think I could've had a better compliment than a few words from Al Pacino."
The raves in the press hadn't bothered him. "I don't read anything they write about me," he says. "A guy years ago told me, 'If you don't read the bad shit, you can't read the good shit.'" But the encouragement from his peers was something else, and when he went to make his first film after all the hype for The Wrestler - a remake of the Georgian thriller 13 Tzameti - he began to worry. "I thought, 'How am I gonna bring to my next performance what I did to the Wrestler?' And as soon as I went into 13, I think, in the first two days, I did better work than I did in The Wrestler. So it's about maintaining that work ethic."
And Iron Man 2, in which he plays Tony Stark's tattooed Russian nemesis, Ivan, is possibly the biggest movie yet in Rourke's new career. For Rourke this means going to Russia, drinking vodka and visiting jails to study prison tattoos and find his character's tics. "I decided to do half my role in Russian," he beams, "and that's hard because the Russian language doesn't roll off the English-speaking tongue very easily. I spent three hours a day with a teacher, and after two weeks I know four sentences! Let me see, it's sort of like... 'Yezzamee menya... Yezzamee manya obott... Er, nemaboootty menya...'"
This goes on for quite some time. "It means," he says, finally, "If someone kills me, don't wake me up, because I'd rather be dead than live in your world."
But the land of blockbuster movies is not somewhere Rourke plans to stay long. "I'm not gonna rush out and see the next Batman, I'm not big on formula movies. I don't like all that Spider-Man shit."
So after Iron Man 2, Rourke will go straight to the set of Stallone's second world war movie The Expendables - the aforementioned favour.
"Stallone, when I was a flat broke and I could hardly pay for a bowl of spaghetti in a restaurant, gave me a couple of weeks on Get Carter, and that paid my fuckin' rent for eight months."
But right now he's most excited about a script he's been polishing for a movie he's making with Larry Clark, which he's been giving his undivided attention."There's a great secondary role," he says, "and I want to attract somebody really interesting. So I spent about three hours last night working on this character, who could be considered one-dimensional, giving him layers, and unpredictability and charisma. I'd love to do it with Mick Jagger," he says. "I'm trying to get Mick to do the other part. He's someone I look up to, always have, I think he's the man, and I want to have that come across, because my character is coming out of prison after 25 years, and this guy's his old friend, and he's waiting outside to explain things to me. So I wrote this scene where he's saying [adopts a Jagger-esque drawl] 'It ain't the same, mate. It's not just smash, grab and third-rate pimps on the street.' So if I could get somebody of Mick's calibre interested, that would fun."
He pauses. "Yeah, that would be fun," he decides, excited, invigorated and - best of all - back in the moment. "It'd be fun to go to work with a legend."
