Mickey Rourke - biography

“Hey, don’t call me an actor, man.  Call me somethin’ else.  Put down animal on my passport.  Or businessman because I’m in the business of living and surviving.  But don’t call me an actor - that’s somethin’ I don’t have a lot of respect for now.”

“What I’ve got to do now is let them judge me for who I am as an actor and not for my notoriety.”

“I had a lot of anger inside me and that came out at times that were not particularly advantageous to me career-wise.”

“Alan Parker wears those glasses to look like an Oxford don.  But he’s really a street kid and that’s what makes him a great director.”

“If it’s interesting material but a weak director or if I don’t like his personality, I won’t do it.  If it’s a really great director I like and the cast isn’t right, then I won’t do it.  It gets a little complicated.”

“I started to shortcircuit because I had high aspirations for the film.  I never told anybody that.”

“It was the most fun I’ve ever had on a movie.  It was one of the happiest times in my life.  I was living in New York, and I really enjoyed acting at the time.  Also, it’s funny because that was also the time when I went downhill.”

“It’s the formulaic studio movies the make money, and when they do, the actors in them are automatically movie stars.”

“Years ago I realized that maybe I made mistake, politically, when I turned a lot of that stuff down.  I would go off to obscure places and make movies that six people went to see.”

“A couple of guys won Academy Awards for the things that I turned down.  Today, after coming to terms with everything, after being in therapy for a long time-there are areas where I will compromise.”

“Jack Nicholson knows how to play the game.  If Jack shit bricks, they’d give him an Oscar.”

“I don’t care about sex anymore.  It’s been years since I made love.  Nowadays, I so much prefer motorcycles.”

“I had the impression we were going to break new territory - certain paranoias and fantasies, certain delicate, subtle things that go on between two people that I wanted to delve into and capture.  But that wouldn’t sell as many tickets as me humping Kim Basinger on a coffee table.”

“It was either therapy or die.”

“A lot of the stuff I am now seeing is edgy, raw kinda material.”

“All I am hoping for is to be able to work - I think my best work is still ahead of me - I think all that I have been through in the last several years have only made me a better, more interesting actor.”

“All that prosthetic makeup drains you.  By the time it’s lunch, you’re done.”

“Comeback is a good word, man.”

“I always knew I’d accomplish something very special - like robbing a bank perhaps.”

“I did think for many, many years that because of my ability I could beat the system.  And I was wrong.”

“I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years.  I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting.  But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn’t get a job.”

“I had some things I had to fix.  It took me 14 years to do it.  But it was never really fun back in the day to work with directors who were a lot older and were like authoritarian and talking to you like that.”

“I never look backwards.  I have always been an athlete.  I boxed before I acted.”

“I trained like an animal, but the thing is focus and concentration.  When the bell rings it’s like when the little red light goes on over the camera.  And I can usually nail my lines on the first or second take because I’m right there.”

“I was very immature when I was young, and for me there was no balance.  Everything was just all or nothing.”

“You wanna be bad, don’t be bad in a Hollywood restaurant, with a bunch of wimpy photographers.  Punching a photographer - what’s that?  Try going to jail.  Plenty of guys there who’ll kick your ass for a nickel.”

Mickey Rourke has appeared in the following films:
1941 (1979)
Heaven’s Gate (1980)
Fade to Black (1980)
Body Heat (1981)
Diner (1982)
Rumble Fish (1983)
Eureka (1983)
The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984)
Year of the Dragon (1985)
Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986)
A Prayer for the Dying (1987)
Angel Heart (1987)
Barfly (1987)
Homeboy (1988)
Francesco (1989)
Johnny Handsome (1989)
Wild Orchid (1989)
Desperate Hours (1990)
Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991)
White Sands (1992)
F.T.W. (1994)
Fall Time (1995)
Bullet (1996)
Exit in Red (1996)
Love in Paris (1997)
The Rainmaker (1997)
Double Team (1997)
Buffalo ’66 (1998)
Point Blank (1998)
Thursday (1998)
Out in Fifty (1999)
Shades (1999)
Get Carter (2000)
Animal Factory (2000)
The Pledge (2001)
Picture Claire (2001)
They Crawl (2001)
Spun (2002)
Masked and Anonymous (2003)
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Man on Fire (2004)
Sin City (2005)
Domino (2005)
Stormbreaker (2006)
The Informers (2008)
Killshot (2008)
The Wrestler (2008)
13 (2010)
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Passion Play (2010)
The Expendables (2010)
Black Gold (2011)
Immortals (2011)
The Courier (2011)


Mickey Rourke contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
F.T.W. (1994)
Bullet (1996)