By Christina Radish

Mickey Rourke at the AFI Fest 2008 Centerpiece Gala Screening of "The Wrestler" held at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. on November 6, 2008.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream), The Wrestler is the first serious film about professional wrestling, even though it has been a major part of American culture for decades. Already receiving critical acclaim for what is a bracing comeback of his own, actor Mickey Rourke spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about why he so closely identified with Randy “The Ram” Robinson, and how grateful he is to have a second chance in life, both personally and professionally.

MediaBlvd Magazine> How did you approach this character?
Mickey Rourke> What attracted me to the piece was the fact that I had an opportunity to work with a really special director. In the years I’ve been working, I can count them on maybe four or five fingers, and I could put Darren Aronofsky right there right at the top of the list, with Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Cimino, Adrian Lyne, and the rest of them. Guys like him come around every 30 years, and I think he’s going to have a long, very distinguished career, and break some new ground with the way he shoots films.

MediaBlvd> What did you like so much about Darren?

Mickey> What I like about him right now is that he’s not making movies to become rich. He lets his wife (Rachel Weisz) do that. He’s very uncompromising. He has a lot of integrity, and he’s smarter than the rest of us. I knew why he wanted me to do this part. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. But, he really fought for me to do this role when he had a lot of resistance, and he kept fighting for me to do it. Finally, I lost the part and, seven when I lost it, he kept fighting for me to do it, and it worked out. The thing I was afraid of most, when I met him, was that he’s very much an authority figure. He’s very direct. He’s very uncompromising with everything in his life. He likes to think of himself as this liberal, open-minded person, but he’s really the captain and he runs the ship, and that’s just the way it is. When he points his finger at you, he does’'t understand that somebody may break it. Thank God, he didn’t meet me 15 years ago. Somebody said to me, “Do you think you could have given the same performance 15 years ago?,” and I said, “Fuck, yeah!” And then, when I thought about it, I realized, “No. I would have told him to fuck off, or kicked him in the ass.” He was smart enough and instinctive enough that, when we had to do really hard, important or emotional scenes, like the one I have with Evan, he brought the best out of me, in a certain way that he spoke to me. As an actor, I had already made an inner choice in what I was using, and he didn’t disturb that at all, but he would say little things to me to just raise the bar each take. He said the right things and he just surprised me because I had thought I already delivered two takes that were gold, but he would come over and just talk to me in a way that maybe Vince Lombardi would talk to a player when he just needed two more yards. I really enjoyed that. It was competitive, in a way. He challenged me. You’ve got to keep moving forward, and you can only do that with a director, if you trust and respect him. He just earned more and more trust and respect, each day. And, I think he felt that way about me too.

MediaBlvd> Can you talk about working with Evan Rachel Wood?

Mickey> When we were working with Evan, it just rubbed off. She was already talented enough, in her own  right. To me, she’s the best actress I’ve ever worked with. Under the circumstances, I didn’t even know her name. We just did the scenes, and then we introduced ourselves a week or two later.

MediaBlvd> What was the most difficult part of this production for you?

Mickey> The hardest part, really, was getting myself physically ready to pull off looking like these guys because these guys are fucking huge. I walk around at 192 pounds. To get up to 235, over a six month period, took a lot of work. The extras were half of Darren’s family from Brooklyn. It was that kind of shoot. Everybody was sweating and working 17 hours a day. I remember waking up in the morning, after getting 4 ½ or 5 hours of sleep, because we were doing double turnarounds. I couldn’t get out of bed until the trainer would pick me up because everything just didn’t work. I would get out of bed, feeling like I just got into bed. It was grueling. It was really hard. And, it wasn’t hard just for me, it was from the camera operator, all the way down to Darren. Nobody really slept. Everybody just worked their ass off for Darren.

MediaBlvd> You’ve overcome a lot of personal obstacles in your life. How does it feel to be back on top of your game, and receiving all of this reward recognition?
Mickey> When shit started to happen for us at the Venice Film Festival, we didn’t even have a distributor. I felt that we had something after six days, but I didn’t know it would go this far. Then, we went to the Toronto Film Festival and people were really receptive. Some reviews came out that were really positive, and I wasn’t really surprised at that. After 10 years went by and I wasn’t working, I thought, “I really don’t want to be in this business, if I’m going to come in and work a day or two.” I don’t want that kind of career. I thought, “If I can’t be the man, then I’d rather just go back to Miami and do whatever the fuck lands on my lap.” Sin City opened the door a little bit, and then The Wrestler kicked the door down. I’m really lucky to have a second chance because I misbehaved for 15 years, really fucking badly, and I regret it. I just didn’t have the tools to change myself, at the time. I was able to work with somebody, get information on why I misbehaved and destroyed everything I worked so hard to do. I worked really hard to be the best actor I could be, when I was at the Actor’s Studio. My early success brought up old wounds, and I questioned my life and what happened in my life, and instead of feeling good about it, I was really angry about it.

 MediaBlvd> Were there moments when playing Randy felt uncomfortable?
Mickey> Many, yeah. It was one of the reasons, when I was replaced by another actor, early on, that everybody was upset about it, but me. When I sat across from Darren, I was looking at him and listening, and I could see how smart the guy is. I knew he’d want his pound of flesh, and I knew why he wanted me. I thought, “I’m going to have to revisit some really dark, painful places.” I wasn’t so much worried about the physical stuff, as I was that, and then not getting paid to work so hard. I was relieved when I was replaced because I thought, “Oh, let me just go do some half-ass movie, and get paid 10 times more than they’re offering me on this.” But, then the other side of my brain that went, “This is a chance to work with somebody really good.” With a lot of the character in this movie, I really didn’t want to go there. This is a desperate, hopeless situation that he’s in.

MediaBlvd> Would you say you’re lucky to be alive now?
Mickey> Oh, yeah. Due to natural circumstances or my own, fuck yeah. Thank God!

MediaBlvd> Have you reached a place of peace with yourself now?
Mickey> I’m getting there. I’m pretty much there, as much as I’ll probably ever be. There’s always going to be a war going on inside of me. That’s just my make-up. It just gives me the fire to burn and to keep moving forward. It comes with the territory. I’ve just got to keep a lid on it.

MediaBlvd> How did you get Bruce Springsteen to write a song for this film?

Mickey> During my lost years, Springsteen and I, who had been friends for 20 years, didn’t even talk for about 13 years. I wrote him this long letter about how I had been lucky because I hit bottom, and then I was able to find someone to give me information about why these things happened to me, why I reacted the way I did, why I had so much anger, and what the armor, the toughness and all that macho shit and craziness, not worried about consequences, was about, and why all that surfaced again. There were issues I had that weren’t really about what I thought. It was more about shame and hiding from other things. The success just made me short circuit, and I hated stuff. I wanted to be taken care of when I was little, and not when I was an adult. So, when I wrote Bruce a letter, I told him that I was lucky that I was able to meet a few good men to help me change my ways, and that change took place over a long period of time. I explained to him how Randy didn’t have that available. And so, when you hear his song, he can hear that he got it. That’s one of the reasons why he wrote the song for us. We couldn’t afford to pay him. And, we couldn’t afford to pay Axl for the use of “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” Those guys stepped up to the plate for us, in a big way.

MediaBlvd> Why was it so important for you to use the Guns N’ Roses song?
Mickey> When I used to fight, I used to come out to that song. There was one day, when I was getting ready to come out in front of this arena, because we were shooting between live shows, and I had to remember it was not a boxing match. In the dressing room, you’re all nervous and scared. But, when your music comes on, that’s when you come out. You’re not afraid anymore. That’s when the fun stuff starts.

MediaBlvd> Is acting like being in the ring for you?
Mickey> Sure. I love competition. I used to love playing football in high school. I played with the same guys for 10 years. We played as a team, and it was competitive. I don’t want to lose a game by one touchdown or one point. I don’t want to fucking lose at all. I don’t want to lose when I'm playing sports, and I don’t want to lose when I’m acting. Darren challenged me to bring it, and be the best actor I could be, so I gave him every fucking thing I had. I gave him my fucking blood. I’ve got no problem with that, at all. People say, “Oh, acting isn’t competitive.” It is competitive. I’ve worked with actors that can competitively raise you to another level because they’re working off you. You can get some son-of-a-bitch in there that wants to do something different, and then I’ll just roll him up and smoke him like a cheap cigarette. You can either work together and bring each other up to another level, or you can do it the other way and I’ll make toast out of your ass. It’s up to the other person.

MediaBlvd> What is the reaction of some of the real wrestlers who have seen this movie?
Mickey> That was one of the big hoorahs we got. We had a screening and Darren said, “I hear Rowdy Roddy Piper is in the audience. We’d like to know, since this is your world, if we made a movie that depicts you in a way that you think is accurate. Did you like it or did you hate it? Do you have anything to say?” There was a long pause, where Darren looked over at me and I could tell he was nervous. And then, Rowdy Piper went on to give us the highest compliments that anybody could give. We made this movie, and these are the guys we wanted to pay homage to, and he was very emotional about it. He talked to us about being at the other end of your career. He’s not in Madison Square Garden right now.

MediaBlvd> Did you base your character on a specific wrestler?
Mickey> Only the hearing aid thing. That was from a wrestler, named Magic, that my brother was friends with. We’d be in Gold’s Gym, pumping iron, 15 or 16 years ago, and the guy had one in each ear.

MediaBlvd> Since you filmed the wrestling matches in front of real audiences, what was that like when you first went in front of the crowd?
Mickey> I was shitting myself. I was 234 pounds of muscle, and I had to do this one scene where I flip over and do the scissors, and I hadn’t nailed it in rehearsals. We got real close. I wanted to do it because it was hard to do. My hands are pretty busted up from boxing and they lock on me, so for that scene, I put extra tape on my hands and I took my kneepads out, so I’d be a little lighter. I thought, “If I nail it, I’m going to nail it on the first take or, in front of all these people, I’m going to fall down.” And, I hit in on the first try. It’s a real hard maneuver, especially being 30 pounds heavier. I did it, and I’m more proud of that than anything in the fucking movie. I looked over at Darren and I had a big smile on my face, and so did he. I said, “That’s it. One take. I can’t do that again!”

MediaBlvd> Are there any projects on the horizon that you’re looking at taking on?Mickey> I just finished this movie, called 13, with Ray Winstone, who’s a great actor. One of the reasons I’m doing it is the ensemble of actors who are in it. It’s a remake of a French movie, called 13 Tzameti, about all these guys playing Russian roulette. Jason Statham, who’s a
fucking great actor, is in it, along with Curtis Jackson, who’s 50 Cent, and Ben Gazzara. There is also a really interesting young actor in it, named Sam Riley. The ensemble is great.

MediaBlvd> Who do you play in the film?
Mickey> It’s not a character that’s in the original movie. It’s a character that (writer/director) Gela Babluani wanted to develop and add. It’s a guy who is from Texas that they end up smuggling out of a jail in Mexico because all the guys who play Russian roulette are in this circle. Ray Winstone’s character is from an insane asylum, another guy is from a jail, and there are two busboys that they capture. There are 17 guys playing Russian roulette, and Sam Riley’s character is there by accident. I’m not always going to be able to work with Darren Aronofsky, so I said to myself, “I’ve got to work with people who have integrity, and who are very interesting and smart, and who want to cast the best people they can. Then I’ll feel good about myself.” I’m not going to go off and make Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man because they’re paying me a whole bunch of money. I’d rather take a whole lot less money and work with really good people, or just not work at all.

MediaBlvd> What’s the status of Sin City 2?
Mickey> I have no idea about that. You’ll have to talk to those confused people.