extract --

iW: The casting was also wonderful. Did you always imagine Mickey Rourke in the role of Jan the Actress?

Buscemi: He was the first one that we went to, but we didn't always imagine Mickey in that role. It was something that Sheila Jaffe thought about, who was my casting director. We knew that we wanted a really strong actor to play that role. We thought it would be a good opportunity for an actor. Once he signed on, I think he may have been a little sensitive at first, but once he committed, he really committed. He showed up on set practically in character. He did his own nails, he did his hair, he brought his own wardrobe. He even wrote that monologue when his character talks about becoming a butterfly and flying beyond the bars and flying to Paris. That was all his. I only had him for like a day and a half and I just remember not wanting to stop filming because he was just so fascinating to watch.

"Throughout the 90's, with his New York Daily News columns "Hot Copy" and "Downtown," A.J. Benza told the skinny on the personalities that fed American's appetitie for celebrity, high society and criminal mischief. FAME: AIN'T IT A BITCH, Confessions of a Reformed Gossip Columnist tell the stories behind the stories about the actors, rock stars, models, moguls and society bad girls that are the spice of Manhattan's legendary night life.Benza gives the real inside scoop."

Whenever my phone rang at 3 a.m., somebody was either dead, drunk, or wanted to get laid. But this time it was Mickey Rourke, shaking me from my own high, with a bone to pick with New York Post gossip columnist Richard Johnson.

"I need you to tell me where this motherfucker lives. And then I want to go there tonight and have a talk with him."

"Mickey, what time is it, man?"

"It's time for me to deal with him."

"Where you at?" I asked.

"Some bar," he told me. "Frederick's, uptown."

"Who you with?

"Tupac and Enos," he said, referring to the late rapper Tupac Shakur and Mickey's acting pal John Enos. "Hey, man, where's Johnson live? I know you know."

"Don't do anything stupid," I said. "I'll be right there."

It had been going on like this for a while between me and Mickey, who I'm not ashamed to say was something of an idol of mine. It had also been going on like this between Mickey and Johnson, because of the columnist's insistence on using his Page Six column to knock Mickey's acting, his boxing career, his personal hygiene, and lately his high-profile separation from his supermodel wife, Carré Otis.

Anybody who would have taken the time to listen to Mickey would have learned that the actor was genuinely heartbroken over the split and was at his wits' end in terms of getting her back into his life. And I don't think anybody listened more intently than me. I'd fallen in love with his acting when I saw Diner, and my obsession grew from there. I was thrilled that I could help him in any capacity at all.

When I got to Frederick's I found Enos and Tupac at the bar and Mickey in the men's room looking over an early edition of Page Six. Johnson had written a scathing attack on Mickey, and the actor was raving mad.

"Look at what this motherfucker wrote," Mickey said, pushing the paper my way.

"Don't worry about it," I assured him. "I'll fix it tomorrow in my column, and I'll go on TV and punch holes in his whole story."

No sooner had I finished the sentence than Mickey started pummeling the plumbing in the empty bathroom. During the course of his one-minute rampage, the sink was broken, a mirror shattered, some pipes ruined, but his reputation—as far as I was concerned—was left intact. You don't fuck with Mickey Rourke.

. . . . .

Tyk: I 've never heard of A. J. Benza till now... but I like him already!
This is perhaps just one fifth of the whole excerpt. I've excluded the remaining portion cuz it's not related to Mickey Rourke. If you want to read the rest of it, visit www.talkmagazine.com, go to the 'Talk Books' section, click on A. J. Benza's book, and then click 'Read the book excerpt'

Mickey Rourke cinema's brawling bad boy is back from B-movie wilderness. Jessica Berens finds him a changed man.

ALL hail Mr Cranky. The punch-drunk weirdo from New York has had his face rebuilt, his spirit refurbished and his Mini souped up. Mickey Rourke. Devout Catholic. Bad boxer. Good actor. He still owns a gold-plated Rolls-Royce, but he drives a 1963 Mini Cooper, racing green.

  He is six foot tall, walks like a docker with a kind of swaggering roll, and is all blown up like a steroid superstar. He goes to the gym twice a day, lifts big macho weights. They keep him calm. His body says DO NOT MESS WITH ME. But his long thin hair has golden girly highlights and he owns chihuahuas who have been known to wear jumpers. Mr Atlas outside; Gloria Swanson inside. Very, very eccentric.

It is 10.30am. 'I haven't even started smoking today,' he says, unpeeling a packet of Marlboro with big sausagey fingers that don't work quite like they used to because of the boxing. His hands have been broken and there has been irreparable nerve damage. But at least his memory is returning; there was a time when he could not have told you what he had done last night, which, judging from his past record, was probably a good thing.

We are at the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood. It's a rock'n'roll place. Rather expensive. He has zapped down the Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu, hunched up in his Mini. St Victor's, his church, is round the corner. He goes twice a week when nobody else is there. He believes in purgatory and hell and all that. He is trying to be a good person, it's just not that easy.

Lord, he was cute when he was young - that soft voice, the black eyes, the atmosphere of gentle menace. Women loved him from the moment he appeared as The Motorcyle Boy in Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983) to the moment he came on as an urbane deviant in 9 1/2 Weeks (1986).

He came from the streets - a wild man from Liberty City, a ghetto in Miami best known for its slums and drugs and riots; a hell of urban desperation where, until very recently, the crossfire of gangsta-guns meant that children simply did not go outside.

His mother had left behind his father, Philip, in New York. Mickey hardly knew him, never saw him, and did not recover from the separation for years. Philip was a loner, and an amateur body-builder, pumping himself in a way now replicated by his son. Beef up the body. It might protect you. But then again, it might not.

Mickey and his younger brother, Joey, were bullied by their new stepfather, whom they loathed. Rourke has often said that his stepfather was a brutal man. Those who are hurt when young often expend a lot of energy ensuring that they will never be hurt again, and this is relevant when one observes that his life looks like one long bar-room brawl. But where Joey would hit people with baseball bats, teenager Mickey took it out in the ring.

Then amateur theatre provided a better escape, and a ticket to New York propelled him to Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio in 1972. He moved to Hollywood in 1978 and trudged about in bit-parts, until Lawrence Kasdan cast him as an arsonist in Body Heat. After that he was a contender, cited as the new De Niro, the new Nicholson. He worked with Michael Cimino (Year of the Dragon, The Pope of Greenwich Village), Alan Parker (Angel Heart), Barbet Schroeder (Barfly). In the Eighties he had it all.

But he saw through the lies that make the town go round; he could not pretend to like trite, and he resented the sleaze.

'All the years I was at the Actors' Studio I studied really hard - and I taught there for a bit - and I really thought acting was about an art form in which there was a lot of truth. The thing that really got me [in Hollywood] was the level of mediocrity.'

You once said that acting is not a man's job, I say.

'Mel Gibson was real offended by that comment. He said, "Well, Mickey just thinks he is a tough guy in a black T-shirt." Mel's problem is that I am.'

But are you? Or are you someone who drives a Mini and owns teency little doggies?

'Tell Mel to come and meet me in a phone booth sometime and we will answer that question.'

So you think you're tough?

'Let's put it this way - I cultivated that for so many years it became a way of life.'

By the early Nineties he was moving with an entourage of tattooed bodyguards and leather-clad bike boys. The 'friends' were the late gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur (with whom he made Bullet), and Mafioso capo John Gotti. Rourke was photographed turning up in court to hear the latter's murder case in 1992.

Then he surrendered his integrity and did things to pay for the houses, the fancy hotels, the jetting about, the cars and the parties. He made films such as Double Team, an idiotic action movie with Jean Claude Van Damme, and Another 9 1/2 Weeks, a soft-core sequel. So he lost his soul. He was arrogant and he was violent, and he seemed to enjoy using his fame to provoke people. Directors Adrian Lyne and Alan Parker have described working with him as 'maddening' and a 'nightmare' respectively, while producer Robert Evans observed in 1995, 'The problem is what you see is what you get. Mickey has this fantastic, dark brooding appeal. In reality this disguises a certain vulnerability. But he has hit out at too many people.' Friends started to hate him, mostly because they were frightened of him. Film directors shook their heads; the studios did not want to back such an emotional timebomb. The doors began to close.

'I was hanging out with gangsters and this kinda thing and they all knew that. Drugs an' drink was never my deal, it was just kickin' ass. It scares everybody. And it scares me. More than you can imagine. But I don't associate with the elements that I used to. I am by myself now.'

Women, however, have always found him powerfully seductive. 'He is very unsettling,' says Annabel Schofield, who co-starred with him in the unremarkable Exit in Red in 1996. They have remained friends. 'My heart would always beat and I wouldn't know why. He knows which buttons to pressÉ you know you are being manipulated but you enjoy it.'

It was ravishing model Carre Otis to whom Rourke lost his heart. Their passionate affair, while co-starring in the erotic thriller Wild Orchid, led to marriage in 1992.

Otis, 10 years younger, had already been damaged by unloving alcoholic parents leaving her with both anger and addictions. Looking for protection from a world that had hurt her (her first love, coked out, shot himself in the face at the age of 14), she thought she saw it in the big movie star with the big mouth. But Rourke was violent and abusive. A charge for battery two years later was dropped only when Otis failed to testify. It was, however, his infidelities that finally ended the relationship four years ago. He has always regretted this. 'I have only loved one woman and that is it,' he says now.

As he staggered towards 40, Rourke seemed to be in the middle of either a nervous breakdown or a very bad mid-life crisis. His Beverly Hills house was repossessed by the bank. He is still paying off debts. 'My accountants took my credit cards away from me.' There were reports about a suicide attempt and anxiety attacks. He was arrested following a fracas with police in Miami and he smashed up the Plaza Hotel in New York to the tune of £12,000. The dramas of miserable dysfunction were being played out in a public arena.

In among all this came his surreal decision to pursue a professional career in middleweight boxing. Prize-fighting required him to stay at a weight of 178 pounds and, at times, to eat only 800 calories a day. Living and training in Florida, he fought 11 fights in five years, made some cash, suffered two concussions, a fractured cheekbone, a split tongue and some broken metacarpals.

He kind of likes his scars, and talks about them with actorly gestures to illustrate the various agonising medical dramas. He has a drama-queen panache which makes him fun to listen to.

'So,' he says (standing up and performing on the invisible podium with which all actors travel), 'I had four operations. My nose had started to get wide because of the punching, and then I had no cartilage, so they took cartilage from behind the ear and rebuilt all this, and then they had to redo this because the cheekbone got broken. And what happened was I went on the plane and it swelled from elevation, then I had a haematoma, so what they have to do is stick a needle here to draw everything out.

'I went to this plastic surgeon whose nickname is "The Butcher" and he stuck this long needle up my lip and pulled out all this infection. I was screaming in the chair, really screaming. I was supposed to go back one more time but I didn't. I got on a plane and went to do a movie instead. But the lip was out to here... I did a coupla movies like that.' He pauses. 'I don't miss boxing.'

It has taken four years for his face to return to relative normality. In that time he has done a lot of thinking. 'I have realised that if you don't put all that away, it can ruin everything,' Rourke says. 'I was out of control, but I didn't think I was miserable. How can you when you are that wound up?'

He will be 50 next year. Is he still cute? Not quite. But he is entertaining and charismatic and that makes him attractive. He has promised change before, and he is promising it again, but this time he knows there will be no more chances. There is therapy once a week. There is the church. There is a new agent. There is hope.

Now, Rourke says, he won't do things 'just for the bread'. What finally convinced him? A project entitled Luck of the Draw, from which he was fired in 1999 after an argy-bargy involving his (late, lamented) chihuahua, Bo Jack.

The reports at the time said the row had flared because the director would not give the dog a part in the movie. Rourke has this to say: 'I met this director who hadn't done much, and he was like a really bad actor before he was a director, so I was hesitant about the job, but I needed the money. It was with Eric Roberts and Dennis Hopper and I like both of them.

'So I show up to the set. Dennis is working and Eric is there. I'm supposed to walk into this warehouse and get killed. Ice T and Eric and Dennis had, like, three or four minutes of dialogue before I said something. I wanted an activity, so I said to the director, "Listen, if I come in and I have my little dog with me I won't be standing there just waiting to get killed, I could have business, patting the dog, not just sitting there shaking in my boots," so he said, "Cool, go ahead."

'So we do several rehearsals; the next thing, the director comes in and says, "We can't use the dog." And I say, "Why, do you have a better choice?" He says, "It's not me, it's the producer." I say, "Listen, I've worked on a lot of movies, and a producer has never told the director or the actor what choice the actor makes. OK?" So they go for lunch. Dennis Hopper comes walkin' over to me and says, "They're replacing you." I say, "You gotta be kiddin' me." He says, "The dog..."

'To make a long story short, the bond company intervened, and I got reimbursed for my money, but all the flak about me gettin' fired and the dog was just stuff I didn't need.'

Now his career is back on track. He landed a part in the remake of Get Carter because Sylvester Stallone rooted for him. 'The studio did not want me, but on the last day of the shoot Mark Canton, one of the producers, came up to me and said, "Hey, we were scared to hire you, but in the future we will use you."'

He is making interesting movies with honorable people who care about what they do. He has a scene with Jack Nicholson in The Pledge, because Sean Penn, who was directing, asked for him. It is a small role, the father of a murdered child, but Rourke enjoyed himself. 'Jack was the man. He was there for me. It was my scene, and he was glad. It was nice to finally work with somebody who is that secure that they can be happy for you. He was so giving, I thought, "This is why I want to act again".'

The studios still distrust him, but the directors, especially the young ones, like the myth that has now become attached to him. They remember Mickey Rourke and they remember one salient and very important fact: the man has talent.

So when Steve Buscemi, with his off-Broadway sensibility, was casting Animal Factory, he thought of Rourke, and not only did he think of Rourke, but he wanted him to play a transvestite - an imaginative idea which has resulted in the most mesmerising performance that Rourke has given to date.

Animal Factory, set in a prison, was written by ex-con Eddie Bunker from his novel of the same name. It stars Willem Dafoe and Edward Furlong. Rourke is 'Jan the Actress' - a muscular individual with green fingernails, thick lipstick and a lisp, who shares a cell with Furlong. It is a characterisation that discards stereotypical gender jokes to create a three-dimensional reality that very few actors can achieve.

'When I first came out to LA I used to bounce in a transvestite nightclub. These transvestites would always get in trouble because they've got big mouths, and back then they were all on angel dust so a lot of them didn't have their front teeth. You didn't know what the hell they were saying, they would be cussing you out and lisping at the same time, and then I'd go to throw one of them out and I would grab them and he would have bigger arms than me. They are pretty banged up, the ones on the street, and that is what I basically used.

'I don't have two front teeth so I went to my dentist and had him take out my fixed bridge to get that lispy accent. I went to Beverly Hills to a real fancy joint and got a French manicure and then they did this thing where they put all this wax over my eyebrows and made me new ones, longer and higher.

'I had my hair cut real short and coloured with blue tips. And then I went to Trashy Lingerie and got this little red satin brassiere. I had this old cowboy shirt and cut the sleeves off and tied it up and had a belly ring put in which hurt like hell. I found these high heels but they wouldn't have high heels in prison so I tore the backs off 'em and made slippers with a big puffy pink thing in the front...

'The only thing I would never do again was get on the plane like that. I flew from LA to Vancouver. I got so nervous I broke out in hives.

'I sat next to some fat business guy. I had these sunglasses on and the lady would come over and say, "Would you like the chicken dinner or the fish?" I didn't want to speak so I just had nothing.

'When I got to the prison where they were shooting, I went up to Steve and he didn't recognise me. So it worked pretty good.'

His romantic life? He is seeing Carre Otis again. Now receiving help for addictions, she is, he says, 'my best friend - you can't put a price on it. If she said, "I wanna go to Arkansas and get a farm", I would go with her and leave this business.'

He has just been with her at her house in Malibu - he, and the crowd of Buddhist monks who are currently enjoying her hospitality. 'There is a lama there and nine Buddhists. They do healings and astrologicals and people come up for meetings. I have been there for a week helping with the lunches and dinners. You know what they love to do? Watch TV and eat ice cream. They sit there with the clicker waiting for action movies to come on.'

Is he happy?

'I'm a lot happier than when I had a big ol' mansion and six yes-men round me the whole time.'

So about your rep...
The rep. The fucking rep (laughs). They can have the rep. As long as scumbags like (New York gossip columnist) Richard Johnson are writing shit -- like I'm in a restaurant trying to pick up another guy. You know what I'm sayin', I mean low blows. This guy's been on my ass for ten years. All I'm sayin' is if you're gonna be a professional, be a professional. Don't be a scumbag and stab somebody in the back. But you know, if you're a worm, you're always gonna be a worm. (Laughs) Nothing wrong with a little payback.

"You know, I got in touch with Evander a few years ago because we had the same nutritionist..." He pauses for a moment. Not the Mickey Rourke dramatic pause that helped make him famous, but more of a flu-induced pause of exhaustion. He takes a drag off his smoke, a sip from his coffee, then connects with my eyes again. "Evander's a great champ. He trains real hard, makes great decisions, is prepared and is very smart. I really admire him...he's great for boxing."

Rourke falls silent again, as if he struck a nerve in himself. It's here, in such a moment of introspection, that you realize that Mickey Rourke's not quite the guy he's been portrayed to be. You know, the surly guy who makes everything difficult or whatever. He seems frail, vulnerable, sensitive, as if he just received some really bad news. It's a glaring contrast against the tough guy facade that's backed him into a corner with Hollywood and knocked his career off track. And you get the sense that he not only knows this, but fully understands it. He's almost at peace with it. He's lived it. You get the sense that it's been a long, hard battle, too.

Ten years ago, Mickey Rourke was poised for superstardom. He knew it, the industry knew it, and audiences knew it. But sometimes life has its way of humbling us, throwing unhitable curve balls our way just to fuck with us. And Mickey Rourke's been fucked with. He's also fucked himself, and he's the first person that'll tell you that.

"Ten years ago I refused to look at this as a business," he says. "I approached it as an art, something to hone, craft, and become good at. But now, I realize that naivete bit me in the ass."

He smiles a half smile, as if to say it felt good to just say that. It bit me in the ass. Yeah, life can do that. But the toxic mix of art and commerce can really drag your ass into the abyss. Rourke kept chugging ahead, though, banging his head against the establishment, until it was just time to "get out."

"I was banging myself up pretty good there for a while," he says, forcing a small, gruff laugh. "I think I just realized that at the time I didn't have the tools or the smarts to deal with the whole 'This is a business' Hollywood game. I just didn't know how to deal with it, and I said to myself 'I better get out of this business before I'm out of it completely.' Plus I was stubborn..."

Rourke did get out in the late '80s, turning to his childhood dream of becoming a boxer. He moved back to his hometown of Miami and began a brief, but wholly therapeutic, career as a light heavyweight. He had 11 professional fights, taking him from Argentina to Spain to Japan and, of course, back to Miami - which proved to be the toughest fight of all. Rourke not only had to stare down the demons of his rough childhood, but also deal with the fact that most of his old buddies were either dead or just plain gone, not to mention the pain of watching his younger brother go through a second bout of cancer.

"Yeah, I think I might have had a nervous breakdown during that time," he says, staring at me intently. "Boxing exorcised some demons for me, it gave me discipline and made me realize that acting wasn't so tough compared to what it's like being a boxer. I mean, I broke my nose three or four times and broke my cheek, etc. etc."

Rourke shows me the scar behind his ear, from which doctors removed cartilage to put in his nose. It's a small scar, barely noticeable, but still a painful memory, a metaphor of battle. His long silences tell you even more about that than his words will. He stares off again. taking another drag of his cigarette, either searching for the next words, or just searching. He locks eyes with me as if he's sizing me up. He seems to be enjoying our silence. Then he ever so slightly leans forward, ready to talk, but still mute. He finally breaks the silence.

"You know, people are so fucking scared of silence, terrified of what it can mean, but I really like it...it's...it's good for people."

Mickey Rourke can act. He's always been able to act. That's never been the rift between Mickey Rourke and Hollywood. The problem with Mickey Rourke and Hollywood is that Mickey's about acting and Hollywood is about marketing. And Rourke never did the kind of pictures where his face would be tattooed on the cover of fast food wrappers and cups. So from the beginning, it was like mixing oil and water. But the pairing of Rourke and Hollywood proved to be too irresistible to completely pass up. Rourke had that cool combination Hollywood has always looked for in its male stars: vulnerability and toughness. It's a winning formula. Dean had it. Brando had it. Montgomery Clift had it. And Mickey Rourke had it. Big time.

The Industry knows when they see it, and they saw it in his small, but very charismatic role in BODY HEAT, some twenty years ago. Then came bigger roles in DINER, RUMBLE FISH, and THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE. Mickey Rourke movies were sort of modern day film noirs: cigarettes, dark overcoats, and rain-soaked metropolises. He was just one key role away from becoming one of the biggest actors in Hollywood. But there was a problem.

That problem can best be explained in the context one of his movie roles. In Michael Cimino's 1985 YEAR OF THE DRAGON (written by Oliver Stone and Cimino) Rourke played Stanley White, an outspokenly honest police captain assigned to clean up the drug wars in New York's Chinatown. But like Hollywood, the Chinatown that Stanley White was assigned to clean up was a world where everybody was on the take, including White's fellow officers. White, like most of Rourke's characters, was a flawed but inherently good antihero trying to do the right thing in a world that doesn't really care much about the means to the end. Finally, his obsessive will to hold onto his ideals almost gets him killed and alienates those around him. Sound familiar? Towards the end of the movie, a broken and despondent White slumps in his kitchen, after his best friend and boss tells him he cares too much about his job, and says "How can anyone care too much?"

That movie didn't do well at the box-office, and was really doomed from the start because of Cimino's past problems and the racist overtures of the script, but there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Mickey Rourke was a force to be reckoned with. It's just that he cared about the means to the end, and that can often be a problem in Tinseltown.

Then the role came. Adrian Lyne's erotic, borderline sado-masochistic 9 1/2 WEEKS cast Rourke as John, the sexy Wall Street exec who meets the Kim Basinger character. And together they explore the darker side of sexuality. Although Rourke wanted the movie to be a bit darker than it turned out, critics and audiences loved it.

"I wanted the movie to be more like LAST TANGO IN PARIS," says Rourke. "But, ya know, Adrian was under pressure from the studios to make it more commercial...Kim was really at the top of her game. I'd love to work with Adrian again."

But Mickey then eschewed super stardom in favor of stretching himself as an actor, and the industry has never forgiven him. After spurning many commercial offers post 9 1/2 WEEKS, Rourke decided to take the role of Harold Angel in Alan Parker's ANGEL HEART. Adopted from the book "Falling Angel," ANGEL HEART was a dark, provocative tale full of voodoo, religion and sex - hardly the kind of movie that could go head to head at the box-office with TOP GUN, LETHAL WEAPON, or DIE HARD. But Rourke's acting was stellar as Harold Angel, the down-and-out gumshoe who's trying to come to terms with who he is and face what he's done in his past.

"A lot of people tell me they like that movie," Rourke says. "Parker was very enthusiastic and knew what he wanted while making that film...and he really pushed me a lot. It was so fucking hot down there in New Orleans where we filmed it and there were so many different subplots going on that at one point while I was reading the script I had to ask Alan which character I was."

And acting with DeNiro?
Another Rourke silence fills the room. But a different silence from before; not really a thoughtful one, this one has an air of restraint, as if he's filled with something to say, but isn't quite sure if he wants to say it.

"Well...I grew up playing sports and see competition as a healthy thing..." he trails off, lighting another cigarette. "But that scares the shit out of some people, especially if they aren't used to it...that's all I'm gonna say about that."

Sylvester Stallone once said that "Mickey Rourke has the heart and soul of a character actor, but the body and image of a leading man." A very apt description. Rourke lacks the bland ordinariness that it takes to be a leading man in American cinema - the so-called "everyman." He'll steer a movie and drive it with his acting, but he can't really sell a movie. And that's the basic function of a leading man.

"Good old Sly," he says, forcing a chuckle. "I should have listened to him 10 years ago when he was telling me to operate my acting career like a business. He's done such a good job of that. Plus, people don't realize that he's a really fine actor...I should have listened to him."

But, instead of listening to Sly, Rourke forged forward, listening to himself. Rourke was stretching as an actor in the game of Hollywood before he should have, before he had a power base or platform to operate from. After ANGEL HEART came A PRAYER FOR THE DYING, BARFLY, JOHNNY HANDSOME, DESPERATE HOURS, and HOMEBOY. All fine performances, but commercial disasters. Although the French were lining up in droves for his movies, Americans had already fallen in love with Cruise and Gibson. Rourke was boxing himself right into a corner. It's here that the valley between Rourke and Hollywood began to widen. Words like "difficult," "moody" and "hard to work with" began popping up more and more in descriptions of him. Words, ironically, that quickly became obsolete when your movies have 15 million dollar opening weekends. But Mickey Rourke movies just weren't putting enough butts in the seats, and those whispered words began to loom larger and larger, eventually becoming Rourke's constant shadow wherever he went.

"It was after BARFLY," Rourke admits, looking really sad just for a moment, "that I broke down. A French journalist who came to visit the set began to cry and said, 'Look what you've done to yourself.' I knew then that it was time to get out. I was broken."

But you'll rarely hear anything bad about Rourke from his co-stars and directors. They all seem to love him. Faye Dunaway, his co-star in BARFLY once said that Mickey was "very professional ...don't believe the bad stuff you hear...this is a business built on gossip."

Cimino, who directed Rourke in both DRAGON and DESPERATE HOURS said that if he was in a foxhole during a war, he'd want Mickey Rourke covering his back.

But it was the "theys," as Rourke will often say, that had it in for him. The guys you never see, but are somewhere, somehow pulling the strings from the ivory tower. Them.

"I used to hate the guys in the Armani suits," Rourke says with a twinkle, "but now I realize that they aren't the enemy, they're just doing their job like me."

But the roles had dried up. Rourke was forced to start playing characters that were mere parodies of his earlier stuff. His casual charisma was now replaced with pure bravado. His once bashful seductiveness was now just an all out swagger. WILD ORCHID was really just a satire of 9 1/2 WEEKS; WHITE SANDS was a very one dimensional role with no script; and HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE MARLBORO MAN was, well, truly the low point. By then Rourke had been cannibalized by the "theys," and now he was turning on himself.

"The anger really ate me up," he says, gesturing with his hands like his head was exploding. "Yeah, the anger did me in. It took the boxing for me to realize how lucky I was to just be in this business and not digging ditches or ripping off drug dealers. But I just had to split for a while."

Mickey Rourke doesn't go to the movies. He hasn't seen a movie in years. In fact, he says he's never seen one of his own movies. And he's never read an article about himself. He tells me he won't read these words. Once he does something, he leaves it behind - completely. When I bring up his old movies, he often has to pause - more silence - to try and get back to them. He can't even recall the director of A PRAYER FOR THE DYING - not because he has forgotten, but because it's in the past. He's not even sure if 9 1/2 WEEKS still holds up as a movie today. "I don't know," he says. "I've never seen it."

But Rourke does know that he's got two movies coming out that could change his career. First, he's playing Bruiser Stone, a flamboyant Memphis lawyer in Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of of John Grisham's THE RAINMAKER - opposite Danny DeVito, Claire Danes, Jon Voight, and newcomer Matt Damon. Rourke always knew that it would take one of his old director friends who had power in Hollywood to bring him back to where he wants to be.

"Francis called me the other day and asked me if my hair was still blonde like in the movie and I said 'Yeah, why?' He told me that after some test screenings that audiences wanted to see more of my character, so we shot another scene the other day right down the street from here. I really appreciate Francis giving me a shot."

When Rourke says "giving me a shot" in his canary-like whisper I get a little sad. Not because I feel sorry for him, but because he says it with such genuine sincerity. Also because it's sad that an actor of his caliber is grateful to work. I guess it's sad for anybody who is really good at what they do, when someone, somewhere, won't let them do it. The middleman. There's a middleman in every business, the guy who really is just an errand boy, but thinks he's the maverick. They tend to ruin everything for the simple reason that they think it's all about them. But the main reason I don't feel sorry for Mickey is that he doesn't feel sorry for himself. All the pieces of the Mickey Rourke puzzle are very clear to him now. He seems to be aware of his place in the world and at peace with it.

"Hey, I'm lucky to be doing this," he says, flashing the second real Mickey Rourke smile of the afternoon.

THE RAINMAKER has all the elements to be the kind of movie that could bring Mickey back. It's from the very successful lineage of John Grisham novels and has a first-rate director - the kind of movie Mickey Rourke should be in. And working with Coppola has given Mickey some hope for a future in the movies.

"When you work with Francis, it's great," he says. "He's in total control and everybody knows it. There isn't going to be a mutiny on a Francis Ford Coppola set. It was the first time in a long, long time that I had fun doing a movie. The last time I felt like that was during POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE."

In a month Mickey will leave for "fucking New Guinea or something" to be in Terrence Malick's comeback war epic THE THIN RED LINE. Malick, the director of DAYS OF HEAVEN and BADLANDS, hasn't made a movie in almost 20 years. Again, it's the kind of movie that could really help Rourke's career - big budget, respected director, and a who's who cast, which includes George Clooney, Sean Penn, and Woody Harrelson.

In addition to the new movies, Rourke has written three screenplays (under the name Eddie Cook) that he hopes to get developed. One of the scripts he and director Vincent Gallo hope to do together, with Gallo both directing and starring. Rourke's giving himself one more year in Los Angeles before he packs it up and heads to New York or Paris for good.

"I fucking hate everything about California," he says defiantly, showing the first hint of any type of negativity. "But I need to be here for work right now, so I'll give it one more year." He continues, almost sheepishly, "I want to work right now."

When Mickey was a child in Miami and he would find himself getting into real trouble, the voice of his grandma would ring in his head, and he would know it was time to split. About four years ago, while Rourke was boxing, getting hit real hard, he heard his grandma's voice ring in his head again. It was telling him to "get out." He was fighting hurt, having to go into the ring and expose himself to real injury, and he was risking any chance he would have to get back into acting.

"It was just time to get out," Rourke tells me. "My hands were fucked up, my ribs were fucked up, my face was fucked up, and it was hard for me to fight at 100 percent...and when you go into the ring at less than that, that's when the real bad stuff happens. I felt I had achieved everything that I set out to...but it was time to get out."

Though Rourke doesn't box anymore, he's now immersed himself in the martial arts. He takes classes every day, and is working toward his black belt. When he speaks about his classes he looks energized and proud. The silences becomes shorter and the cigarettes fewer. He looks happy, content with the choices he's made, but aware of his mistakes. Rourke's finally learned to "let it all go." He doesn't go back to Miami anymore because he's confronted his ghosts there. And he's getting out of Los Angeles because he's finally at peace with the choices he's made with his career. But he's sure gonna have a tough time moving out of L.A. - if only because of his personal wardrobe.

"Yeah, I love the clothes," he says. "Go upstairs and have a look."

I head up to the third floor of his house, and it feels like I'm in a New York thrift store. Racks and racks of coats, shirts, sweaters, hats, shoes, and Levis fill the room. I spot the gray wool overcoat that Rourke wore as Harold Angel in ANGEL HEART and think back to the scene where he's breaking down in front of the mirror sobbing, "I know who I am...I know who I am," as Lucifer (DeNiro) waits behind him to snatch his soul. It's the quintessential Mickey Rourke scene: exposed, vulnerable, real.

Does Rourke know who he is?
"Look, we are only here one this planet for a quick cup of coffee and that's it. I want to surround myself with good energy. I know I've made mistakes, but I'm over that. If you have respect for me, I'll have respect for you. I've let the anger go. But when you come from a certain neck of the woods, you think you have to wear that anger as a chip. And then that chip turns into a big fucking boulder and it becomes so heavy it bogs you down. It's not my way of life anymore. I haven't touched what I want to do as an actor, so I really want to turn it around. But hey, if it doesn't happen I'll be okay. I've always survived, man. I have two arms, two legs, etc. I say it like it is, man. But I've learned not to get in people's face anymore 'cause they are the ones that hold the key - you are behind bars and they have the key. I wasn't built that way, but I realize I have to be that way to survive in this business. I've finally learned to just keep it to myself."

Recently, the fallen film star checked himself into a mental ward for 29 hours after he threatened to commit suicide. A 24-hour guard was put on Hollywood's bad boy after he told worried friends he wanted to kill himself. Rourke was stripped of his shoelaces and belt, and had all sharp instruments taken from him when he entered Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Before that, he had already been seeing psychiatrist Mathis Abrams, the same doctor who has treated Jordy Chandler, the boy at the centre of the Michael Jackson child abuse scandal.

Notes an unidentified source, "He was once the bright young thing around. Now he gets no respect and he finds that hard." After having his Los Angeles house repossessed last year because he could not meet monthly payments, Rourke admitted that he was broke and was quitting his boxing career to get back into filming so that he could earn more money. This might be easier said than done. Having built a reputation as a tough-talking, brawling and brooding star, Rourke has scared off film-makers: "I don't have an acting career any more. I have got a terrible reputation and I think it is because of what people think I am capable of doing," he observed ruefully. "They'd rather hire Daniel Day-Lewis or Kevin Costner. My mouth is twice as big as theirs."