THE ENEMY WITHIN

Mickey Rourke: Beating His Own Worst Enemy Back To The Ring

By Natalie Melendez

MICKEY ROURKE'S THE WRESTLER IS A DOWN-AND-OUT TALE OF A HAS-BEEN BOXER TRYING TO CLIMB his way back to the top.

The general premise is strikingly similar to the Rocky series, Rocky Balboa. But whereas Rocky lives a middle-class existence, owns a restaurant and cashes in on his residual glory, the main character in The Wrestler is a colossal mess of a man, just barely able to afford the rent on his trailer.

And who better to play The Ram than that marvel of hopelesssness and shame, Mickey Rourke.

While many reviewers have pegged The Wrestler as Rourke’s “comeback” film, Rourke has in fact been acting fairly consistently since he caught his first big break in Barry Levinson’s Diner (1982) alongside Kevin Bacon.

It was in Levinson’s film that Rourke displayed an untamed quality compelling critics to label him the next Marlon Brando.

Rourke, like Brando, exuded a calculating, sly, pensive edge hidden beneath an almost angelically beautiful and boyish exterior. He was a walking contradiction, a character whom with one glance could read your game plan and beat you at it.

After proving his acting chops in such movies as Angel Heart, and Rumble Fish, it looked like Rourke was destined for leading-man stardom, but something derailed along the way. Word circulated that Rouke was “difficult.”

Alan Parker, director of Angel Heart, said that "working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do."

Yet offers continued to come in for lead roles in Beverly Hills Cop,The Untouchable, Rain Man and Silence of the Lambs. Rourke rejected them all, opting for more risky roles in films such as 9 ½ Weeks and Wild Orchid.

Rourke turned his back on Hollywood's vision for him. Half resentful of his fame and half in love with it, Mickey “quit” Hollywood in 1991 to pursue boxing, a sport he claimed to have grown up doing. He was no longer a viable option for leading man status, and any chance he had for substantial roles seemed to disappear.

Still, he never disappeared entirely. Most recently he was Kiera Knightley’s mentor in Domino, and the deformed misfit-villain, Marv, in Sin City. But the The Wrestler makes even more perfect use of his battered face, now beaten and bloated, the byproduct of boxing and too many reconstructive procedures. And yet, in context of the film and its subject matter, it’s a face of pure poetry.

Read the full post on Mickey Rourke here.

Natalie Melendez is a work in progress. Currently she resides in an undisclosed mountainous California location, where she spends her time studying, writing and roasting chestnuts by the fire. You can email her here..