Mickey Rourke
Mickey was born Philip Andre Rourke, Jr. in Schenectady, New York to a family of Irish and French descent. He was raised Roman Catholic. His father, Philip Andre Rourke, Sr., an amateur body builder, left the family when Mickey was six years old. After his parents divorced, his mother, Ann, married Eugene Addis, a Miami Beach police officer with five sons, and moved Mickey, his younger brother and their sister to southern Florida, where he graduated from Miami Beach Senior High School in 1971.
During his teenage years, Mickey focused his attention mainly on sports. He took up self-defense training at the Boys Club of Miami. It was there that he learned boxing skills and decided on an amateur career. At age 12, Mickey won his first boxing match as a 118-pound bantamweight (53.5 kg), fighting some of his early matches under the name Andre Rourke. He continued his boxing training at the famed 5th Street Gym, in Miami Beach, Florida, where Muhammad Ali began his career. In 1969, Mickey, then weighing 140 lbs. (63.5 kg), sparred with former World Welterweight Champion Luis Rodríguez. Rodriguez was the number one-rated middleweight boxer in the world and was training for his match with world champion Nino Benvenuti. Mickey claims to have received a concussion in this sparring match.
At the 1971 Florida Golden Gloves, he suffered another concussion in a boxing match. After being told by doctors to take a year off and rest, Rourke temporarily retired from the ring.
That same year, as a senior at Miami Beach Senior High School, he had a small acting role in the Jay W. Jensen directed school play, The Serpent. However, his interests were geared to boxing, and he never appeared in any other school productions. Soon after he temporarily gave up boxing, a friend at the University of Miami told Mickey about a play he was directing, Deathwatch, and how the man playing the role of Green Eyes had quit. Mickey got the part and immediately became enamored with acting. Borrowing 400 dollars from his sister, he went to New York in order to take private lessons with an acting teacher from the Actors Studio, Sandra Seacat.
Mickey's film debut was a small role in Steven Spielberg's film 1941. However, it was his portrayal of an arsonist in Body Heat that garnered significant attention, despite his modest time onscreen. He mostly appeared in television movies in his early career.
Mickey's performance in the film The Pope of Greenwich Village alongside Daryl Hannah and Eric Roberts caught the attention of critics, although the film was not financially successful.
In the mid-1980s, he earned himself additional leading roles. His role alongside Kim Basinger in the erotic drama 9½ Weeks helped him gain "sex symbol" status. He received critical praise for his work in Barfly as the alcoholic writer Henry Chinaski (the literary alter ego of Charles Bukowski) and in Year of the Dragon. In 1987, Rourke appeared in Angel Heart. The film was nominated for several awards. It was seen as controversial by some owing to a sex scene involving Cosby Show cast member Lisa Bonet, who won an award for her part in the film. Although some of Rourke's work was viewed as controversial in the U.S., he was well-received by European, and especially French, audiences, who loved the "rumpled, slightly dirty, sordid ... rebel persona" that he projected in Year of the Dragon, 9½ Weeks, Angel Heart, and Desperate Hours.
Mickey's acting career eventually became overshadowed by his personal life and career decisions. Directors such as Alan Parker found it difficult to work with him. Parker stated that "working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do."
In 1991, Mickey decided that he "…had to go back to boxing" because he felt that he "… was self-destructing … (and) had no respect for (himself as) an actor." He was undefeated in eight fights, with six wins (four by knockout) and two draws. He fought as far away as Spain, Japan and Germany.
During his boxing career, he suffered a number of injuries, including a broken nose, toe, ribs, a split tongue, and a compressed cheekbone. He also suffered from short term memory loss.
Boxing promoters said that Mickey was too old to succeed against top-level fighters. Indeed, Mickey himself admits that entering the ring was a sort of personal test: "(I) just wanted to give it a shot, test myself that way physically, while I still had time." In 1995, he retired from boxing and returned to acting.
Mickey's boxing career resulted in a notable physical change in the 1990s, as his face needed reconstructive surgery in order to mend his injuries. His face was later called, "appallingly disfigured." In 2009, the actor told England's The Daily Mail that he had gone to "the wrong guy" for his surgery, and that his plastic surgeon had left his features, "a mess."
He has been married twice. In 1981, he married Debra Feuer, who he met on the set of Hardcase (1981) and who co-starred with him in Homeboy (1990) as his love interest. The marriage ended in 1989, with Rourke subsequently commenting that making the film 9½ Weeks "was not particularly considerate to my wife's needs."
Wild Orchid co-star Carré Otis was briefly a cause célèbre following the release of the film owing to rumours that she and then-lover Mickey filmed an unsimulated sex scene. Carré married Mickey on June 26, 1992. In 1994, Mickey was arrested for spousal abuse. The charges were later dropped. The couple reconciled and also starred together in Exit in Red, but their marriage ended in December 1998. In November 2007, Rourke was arrested again, this time on DUI charges in Miami Beach. It is rumoured that Mickey is now engaged to Russian model Elena Kuletskaya and that they plan to marry in Spring 2010.
Although it is reported that Mickey still "practices his Catholic faith," it is evident from this short biography that there is a singular ingredient missing from Mickey's life: a personal relationship with Jesus Christ resulting in peace and stability. Rage is a problem, depression has been devastating for him, immorality is the norm in his life. When speaking of his comeback to film and life, he credits psychiatric treatment, a Catholic priest named Pete, and his dogs.
Please pray for Mickey this week. Pray that the God of the universe will do an extraordinary work in his life to bring him to a critical moment of decision for a personal relationship with Jesus and eternal life.
--Heidi