Playboy Interview: Mickey Rourke

Quick, name a Mickey Rourke movie. Let's see...he was the arsonist in "Body Heat," right? Small role, real intense? And he had a featured role in "Diner"--the popcorn scene, right? Now, what else? Oh, yeah, "9-1/2 Weeks," but that didn't stay in town long, did it? And yet...everyone seems to know who Mickey Rourke is. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what is known in the brand-name Eighties as an anomaly: a movie star without a hit movie, a famous person who doesn't appear on TV, a million-dollar-a-picture man whose pictures don't make millions.

There is as much curiosity about Rourke as about any actor today. He is a riveting screen presence, rumored to be tough to work with or get close to, a guy who appears to be a genuine hard case. Unlike James Dean, Marlon Brando or Robert De Niro, heavyweights to whom he is often compared, and in stark contrast to the contemporary tough guys of show business, such as Sean Penn--who may be "bad" but grew up comfortably in the middle class--Rourke came up from the meanest of streets. What we may have here, in other words, is the real thing.

Rourke was the product of a badly broken home, uprooted early and raised in Miami's dangerous Liberty City; his main ambition in life was to be a prize fighter. At 19, when it became clear that he wasn't Rocky Graziano, he borrowed a few hundred dollars from his sister and headed for Manhattan. He lived in sleazoid hotels, scuffling up a living with dead-end gigs and, always, banging away in acting class.

The story of Rourke's ascent from Miami street fighter to Hollywood star is as intense and compelling as any he has appeared in on screen. His recollections are peppered with characters whose names, for legal reasons, cannot be mentioned; with deeds that until the statute of limitations expires are best left sketchy. And with a battery of friends who, quite simply, are no longer around. Despite the grimness of the tale, Rourke, is ever quick to point out that he isn't telling it because he thinks he had it hard. He's telling it because you asked. And he'd be just as happy to keep his mouth shut.

The irony is, having abandoned his bad old ways, Mickey Rourke, the oldest 31-year-old on the planet, now commands upwards of $1,000,000 a picture for portraying the same breed of troubled tough guy, desperate outsider or brinked-out solid citizen he's either been around or been his entire life.

"With Mickey," says Stuart Rosenberg, who directed him. as would-be hood Charlie Moran in "The Pope of Greenwich Village," "you never know if he's going to kiss you or spit in your face. He's got a chip on his shoulder, but he's also got that very rare quality--you'll forgive him for anything."

Indeed. In 1981's "Body Heal," the film that put him on the map, it was Rourke's smoldering edginess, the smile of pained benevolence defusing those gentle killer's eyes, that transformed a minor role as an arsonist into a career-making performance. It was the first of those "Mickey Rourke roles"--parts it was impossible to imagine other actors attempting. In "Diner," a film he stole, there was Boogie, the smooth-talking hairdresser with a soft spot for women and long shots. In Francis Coppola's "Rumble Fish," he played the Motorcycle Boy--heir of The Wild One--a, moody biker whose tattoo might have read BORN TO READ KIERKEGAARD. Ignored here, the film was hailed as a minor classic in Europe, where Rourke is revered.

In "Pope," Rourke teamed up with Eric Roberts as yet another struggler, a stand-up guy estranged from his woman and gunning for the Mob; and in "Year of the Dragon," he portrayed New York homicide ace Stanley While. Most recently, of course, he starred in "9-1/2 Weeks," potentially the "Last Tango in Paris" of its era, in which Rourke introduced Kim Basinger to ever more dangerous sexual games.

But if some readers are scratching their ear lobes and saying, "Gee, I didn't like any of those flicks," join the crowd. No smash hits here. Rourke will tell you so rather proudly--he's an actor hired by directors who want to work with him, not by studios that want to put his name on a marquee. He doesn't sell, he delivers. And he often confounds Hollywood by not even delivering what the industry might expect. The man nixed "Beverly Hills Cop." And it's no secret that he'd rather hang out with Hell's Angels than with the BMW owners who frequent Helena's and Spago. "If there's an underbelly in Beverly Hills, Mickey will find it," is how "Pope" author Vincent Patrick sums up this most un-Hollywood of Hollywood stars.

But it was Larry King, of late-night chat-show fame, who struck fear in our hearts at the prospect of nailing Mickey down. "He's a great guy," said the master interviewer, "if you can get him to talk...."

Duly warned, we sent writer Jerry Stahl off to find out if Mickey Rourke was real. What we found was that he's even realer than we might have imagined.

Here is Stahl's report:

"I first hooked up with Mickey Rourke in New Orleans, on the set of his forthcoming movie 'Angel Heart,' where we holed up for a spell in, the Fish--code name for the Silverfish, a customized silver snail-back trailer the star inhabits between takes. Lest any gung-ho studio types get a hankering to pop in, the man in charge has had a brass plaque mounted prominently on the front door. Its message: EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS STAY THE FUCK OUR--which pretty much puts the kibosh on chat-happy moguls.

"Mickey is by reputation a hard guy--if not an out-and-out sociopath--but it's clear after half a minute with him that the opposite may be closer to the truth. Soft-spoken and unpretentious, Rourke shows the fans who waylay him on the street and the young actors who hit him up for a spot of cash the kind of courtesy a, bastard wouldn't bother to fake. Even the paparazzi, bane of the big time, are treated with respect: 'If snappin' a picture of me puts food on their table, then what the fuck; snap away, Jack.'

"In New Orleans, we talked from midnight on through the night. Same on the West Coast, where Rourke keeps an apartment that's as close to funky as Beverly Hills zoning ordinances probably allow. The walls are plastered with photographs of boxers, most autographed, lending the place a kind of manly, clubhouse feel, like the back room of a barbershop. The shades are drawn tight enough so that, inside, three in the morning shows up looking a lot like three in the afternoon. The place feels more like a hide-out than like a home, which is the way its owner likes it. 'I got a house,' he says, 'nobody lives in.' This is where he prefers to hang out.

"From the slice I sampled, Rourke lives his life in extremis. Sleep and solitude are his enemies. He staves off both with a vigilance that might damage, a lesser camper. 'I hate to go to sleep; I always feel like I'm missing something,' Rourke explains when asked. Sleep deprivation is his brand of high: 'I can go for two or three days on a cat nap. When I get really zoned is when I get my ideas, when I like to do my writing...."

"Keeping Mickey company is a devoted batch of fellows, much of whose life is spent hanging out with the Man. Entourage is too arrogant a word for this crowd. In Mickey's case, whether they're on the payroll, like assistants Billy and Bruce, or just on the scene, like biker Chuck Zito and the ever-present Lenny Termo, these guys seem connected in a way that leaves mere buddies behind and approaches the Knights of the Round Table.

"Whatever happens to be going on in the romance, department--and Rourke is nothing if not discreet--the love you hear Mickey speak about again and again is for his pals, in particular for Termo, 'my best friend.' Lenny is a 50-year-old garment exec turned actor, a soulful New Yorker who, through some happy genetic glitch, seems sired by the secret coupling of Sal Mineo and Zero Mostel. He and Mickey have been together on an almost daily basis for years. And tounderstand Rourke off screen, you have to understand his relationship with Termo.

" 'If they told me they'd chuck a few years off my life, but I knew when I went, Lenny would go with me, I'd do it in a second,' Rourke says with conviction. Termo is equally vocal in his devotion. 'This,' he'll declare solemnly of his soul mate, 'is a great, great man.' Lenny knew Rourke when he had nothing, and Lenny, as Mickey loves pointing out, has nothing now.

"Although Rourke is not known as a comic actor, he and his pal seem like a nonstop existential comedy team, laughing or wailing or propping each other up in the mobile bunker they've, created to survive in Hollywood. Life in the Rourke trailer is such that in one typical interview session, first Lenny rolls in--summoned, after 20 minutes, by a call from Mickey: 'I need you, man!'--followed by Chuck, an affable Hell's Angel flashing loud jewelry, followed by another friendly Angel and a couple, of nice girls, all of whom appear and disappear into the back room, out the door or in and out of the kitchen for snacks as the night wears on.

"At one point, in what I took as the ultimate gesture of acceptance, Mickey asked Lenny to take his teeth out for me. Showing gums, Lenny bore the brunt of Rourke's torment with as much dignity as possible, under the circumstances. 'Look at him,' Mickey cackled, 'look at that face! And this man still tries to pick up 17-year-old waitresses!'

"Eventually, between Chuck's demonstrating kick-boxing technique and Lenny's extracting his uppers, things got a little, well, loud. When the lady downstairs called up to complain, Mickey handled the call. 'I'm really sorry,' he told her in his most velvety-smooth voice. 'This is the last night, absolutely. It won't happen again....' Talk about convincing! Forget the toughness, forget the money, forget everything--this man can act, Jack. Just ask the lady who lives underneath him."

[Q] Playboy: How did you get such a bad-boy image?

[A] Rourke: I don't have a bad-boy image. What do you mean I have a bad-boy image? What the fuck does that mean?

[Q] Playboy: You have a reputation.

[A] Rourke: Wait a minute. Have I ever slugged a photographer? Have I ever spat on a journalist? Have I ever walked off a movie set?

[Q] Playboy: Well----

[A] Rourke: No, wait. Have I ever put my hands on another actor? What do I do? Have I ever shot a producer? What the fuck have I done to get a bad-boy image?

[Q] Playboy: You tell us. Why do you think this myth has sprung up around you?

[A] Rourke: It's just words. I don't do what certain actors do to create a bad-boy image.

[Q] Playboy: Meaning what?

[A] Rourke: That I haven't cultivated it like some actors, ones who want to have that reputation or think it's fashionable because they can't act.

[Q] Playboy: There's a lot of that going around.

[A] Rourke: Right. There are a lot of actors who like to pretend. They're trying to project some kind of tough-guy image, but anyone can see through it. I mean, if you want to be bad, go to jail. Don't be bad in a Hollywood restaurant, with a bunch of wimpy reporters. Punching a photographer--what's that? If you want to be bad, motherfucker, go to jail and try it. There's plenty of guys in there who'll kick your ass for a nickel and won't give a shit. It's all so fucking phony.

[Q] Playboy: You're talking about Sean Penn. What do you think, when an actor like him, who grew up well off, tries to come off as if he's straight from the street?

[A] Rourke: It's a joke. But people eat it up out here. It's, like, everybody asks me about my days on the street, but I'm trying to get away from that. I don't like to glorify it. The people who try to present that kind of image in Hollywood or New York, they don't really know what it's like to live in a flea-bag hotel and live on candy bars or a bag of potatoes for months on end, then go to work on 42nd Street in a massage parlor and have to hassle with the fucking pimps and the drunken cowboys. In the movies, that's all fine and dandy; but in real life, it's a fucking drag, man.

[Q] Playboy: That's your background you're talking" about, right?

[A] Rourke: Yeah, I can't take away where I came from. I didn't choose to be there, but I also know there's a certain element I project as an actor that I couldn't if I hadn't lived the way I did then.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about that. You lived a tough life in Miami before going to New York. How did you feel when you arrived?

[A] Rourke: I was terrified, man. Petrified. I thought the fucking zombies were going to come through the windows any minute. The boys I had hung out with in Miami gave me a club to take with me to New York. They said, "Where you're going, you're gonna need this, man." It was like I was going to hell. They made me this club as a going-away present. I carried it around for, like, four years.

[Q] Playboy: You walked around New York City with a club?

[A] Rourke: No, no, I kept it in the room, but I slept with the fucking thing under my pillow. I used to work parking cars and keep it in the shack on the lot. I think I left it there when I got fired. One day, the guy who ran the place came up to me and said, "Mickey, you crashed $40,000 worth of cars this year. You're getting kind of expensive." I just couldn't back 'em in.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you go to New York in the first place?

[A] Rourke: I knew time was running out. I was living in a motel down in Miami called the Wild West. Me and five guys. And, uh, a couple of things went down bad. I can't really be too specific, but you can only get by with the kind of shit I was into for so long. The whole young macho trip. Fighting, having big balls. A lot of people from back then are gone now--O.D.ed, dropped dead, shot.... You can't survive that way in this day and age. And I knew that. I was 19. I didn't want to be a professional bad-ass.

[Q] Playboy: Where did acting come in? It doesn't sound as though you and the boys at the Wild West spent a lot of time kicking around Tartuffe.

[A] Rourke: All through junior high and high school, I had a job as a pool boy at the hotels. I used to get up before school and lay out hundreds of mats in these different hotels. And there was a guy I worked with, a guy who'd been in classes with me, who called me up around this time and said he was doing this play at one of the colleges, I forget which, and he needed somebody. So I went down there and did this Genet thing with him, a showcase, about a black guy and a white guy on death row. I really liked it. I don't think I was very good, you know, in that first thing. But it was like, "Hey, this is a great feeling. Whatever this is, this is neat." It seemed kind of special. And, you know, I didn't know who Marlon Brando was, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, any of those guys. All I knew was Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood. I knew cowboys and that shit. John Wayne. I didn't know who serious actors were. Nor did I give a shit. The only one I knew was Terence Stamp.

[Q] Playboy: Why Terence Stamp?

[A] Rourke: Because I was an usher in a theater and I watched Far from the Madding Crowd about 79 times. I never saw the ending until two years ago. I got in a fight with another usher, who conked me over the head with a flashlight, and I got fired.

[Q] Playboy: How did your Wild West pals react when you started acting?

[A] Rourke: Well, there was one guy I knew who looked like Tony Curtis, a very darkly handsome guy. He got high a lot, so we used to call him Stoney Curtis. Anyway, we were lying out at one of the old hotels--the Oceanside, I think it was; one of those hotels on the beach--and we were talking about thievery, right? The usual thing. [Laughs] He was just out of jail and we were talking about some things we were maybe gonna do. But then I said, "No, man, I'm gonna be an actor. I'm gonna go to New York."

"Hey, don't do that," he says, "stay here. Make a decent living stealing." Man, this was serious talk!

[Q] Playboy: A little vocational guidance?

[A] Rourke: Yeah. "You ain't gonna make it," he says, 'cause he was honest. "You're not a bad-lookin' guy, but there's guys out there that are, like, great-lookin,' and they can't get a job. Hey," he says, "I might not even get a job." The guys I hung around with, see, were either younger than me or a lot older. The guys my age bored the shit out of me. Like, all of a sudden they were getting nervous about "life," you know what I mean? Like, now they had to get serious. You know, we were all gonna go places, do things, but they all fucking copped out; they all chicken-shitted out. So I latched on to an older group of dudes, who knew what the fuck it was all about, or else a real younger group, who were still, like, excited about that shit. And it was the younger group that I kept having to prove myself to.

[Q] Playboy: So going to New York was----

[A] Rourke: Like doing time, man. I was gonna do five years. I promised myself I was gonna try that acting stuff.

[Q] Playboy: You didn't really know what you were getting into?

[A] Rourke: I didn't know anything. I was in good shape when I went. Physically strong. I had just stopped boxing, so I could take care of myself. But that was, like, the only thing I knew, that macho thing. And it didn't do you no good in New York City. I was totally uneducated about New York.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Rourke: Like, everybody told me before I left, "Whatever you do, don't trust any black cabdrivers." They said, "Don't get in a cab with a black driver, 'cause he's gonna rip you off!" So I get off a plane in New York and all these regular, innocent-looking black guys are coming up to me: "Hey, you need a cab?" And I'm saying, "No, man, I don't need no fuckin' cab!" This is how fucking backward I was. Standing there and waiting, like, hours for a white driver. See what I mean? I was a fucking yo-yo.

[Q] Playboy: So you finally got into a cab; then where did you go?

[A] Rourke: This is very embarrassing, where I told him to go. But I wanted to learn acting, so I went straight to an acting school, because I heard that McQueen had gone there. And I still had my suitcases, you know? I walked in with my suitcases and I talked to this man who ran the school. He let me watch the class. He said, "I think you should find some place to stay." I said, "Do you know anywhere?" Finally, some cabdriver took me to one of those transient places, a $35-a-week hotel.

[Q] Playboy: A roach palace?

[A] Rourke: Down the hall, a little guy was opening the grille, peeking in; you couldn't even jerk off in private. It was one of those welfare hotels with nut jobs walking up and down, you know, fucking crazies and killers and guys who were truck drivers who thought they were women. The first night, there was this loud fucking music coming up from somewhere, man. And I kept hearing these voices and shit from downstairs. I closed the window and sat there on the edge of the bed holding my club, thinking somebody fucking crazy from the lobby was going to come up and bust into the room. 'Cause at the time, you know, I had left a lifestyle where I was a little wary of that kind of shit. The slightest sound at the door or whatever and I was jumpy. And there were a lot of strange sounds at that joint, believe me. I put a fucking chair next to the door with a can propped right on the edge, and another can on the window ledge. Anybody tries to break in, you know, I'm gonna hear it.

[Q] Playboy: Somehow, you knew you had to go through all this?

[A] Rourke: Sure. And I'll tell you, I would give anything now if I could just go back to that time. I dream about it now. I'd love to be so in awe of something again. It's like the feeling I get when I go to Paris. I love Paris, because I feel lost there. I love not knowing. I don't like to get used to things. I'm territorial once I'm settled in. But the feeling of being lost, to me, is also a feeling of freedom.

[Q] Playboy: So you wandered around New York, lost.

[A] Rourke: Yeah. When I moved to the Marlton Hotel, I remember I was walking down the street, man, and I saw these dudes down on Christopher Street, and they were all wearing motorcycle jackets. With all the leather, all dressed in black, the whole thing. They kept looking at me, and I'm thinking, Fuck, man, where can I go? What fucking gang is that? None of my boys were with me. This wasn't Miami. I kept thinking, What the fuck is this guy looking at me like that for, man? 'Cause you didn't eyeball somebody back home in Miami unless you wanted to get down, you know--unless you were ready to fight. What I didn't realize was that they were sissies, all dressed up in leather.

[Q] Playboy: When did you find out?

[A] Rourke: Hey, this went on for, like, a couple of years, man. I just didn't realize, I'm telling you. I was walking around with platform shoes, checkered pants, real long hair. 'Cause that's what we wore back home. I had no dealings with real hip people, with smart people, for a long time. This one time, I remember, I took a room--I shared an apartment with this guy--and when I first got there, he swore to me, like, right away, he just started saying, "I'm straight, I'm straight!" And I didn't even know what straight meant.

[Q] Playboy: How did that arrangement work?

[A] Rourke: Well, it was weird, because he had these plants in his house. He filled the house with plants. To me, a house smelled funny with plants in it. I thought people had plants outside. But I'll never forget, one night I wake up and the guy is standing there naked, with an erection, and he's rubbing my leg. And I thought to myself, Man, what am I gonna do now? I didn't know what he was doing. I didn't know why. Finally, it dawned on me this guy was, like, a homosexual. And I left.

[Q] Playboy: So there you were, in this jungle lull of weird people and situations.

[A] Rourke: It was funny, in a way. In the wintertime, I was really, really lonely. And I used to work down by the water, moving furniture in this warehouse where Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen, Gene Hackman and a bunch of other guys had all worked, too. The guy who ran it was an old actor or something and used to tell me stories about them. Anyway, I used to walk home during the night, and I was so fucking lonely, you know, I'd pretend I had a girlfriend waiting for me in my room, waiting to have a cup of coffee with me or go to the movies. As I walked home, I was still daydreaming. Same way I daydreamed in school. I'd say to myself, "Oh, now I'm going home; she'll be waiting for me." Because I couldn't talk to girls. It's easier now. They come running.

[Q] Playboy: Now that you're a sex symbol?

[A] Rourke: Right. A real sex symbol. I'm telling you, I couldn't go up to a girl then if you paid me. I masturbated a lot, you know. But I could not get rejected, so I could not talk. I didn't know how. Anyway, that's how I survived--fantasizing. I had a redhead one night, I had a blonde with big tits the next night.

Lots of times, I'd end up sitting in the Western Union office all fucking night, with all the other lunatics, waiting for ten dollars from my grandmother once a month. Other times, I just had bad luck, living on a bag of French-fried potatoes. You'd buy a bag of potatoes because they were so filling. For a while, I was stealing Hershey bars out of fucking supermarkets because it was a meal. I knew nothing about nutrition or anything like that. I thought I could live on candy bars for two fucking years and I'd be all right. When I left Miami, I was a big dude. I had a neck like a football player. After four years in New York, I weighed 140 pounds. I went home to see my mother, and she cried. My teeth were falling out.

[Q] Playboy: What else were you doing then?

[A] Rourke: Going to acting class and working. I had a lot of jobs in New York. Massage parlors, whorehouse jobs. I was a towel boy in one, night manager in another. I was a Good Humor man, a chestnut-pretzel-cart man, an attack-dog agitator.

[Q] Playboy: Wait a minute. Your job was to provoke dogs?

[A] Rourke: Yeah. I showed up for the job and this guy says, "You ever worked with dogs before?" So I say, "Sure, yeah, all the time. I got dogs all over." Next thing I know, the biggest fucking Doberman pinscher I've ever seen in my life comes tearing out. Now, that's acting, man; that's really fucking acting!

[Q] Playboy: Did you get the job?

[A] Rourke: Well, slowly the guy realized I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. But he gave me a crack at it and I liked it. This guy would fire a gun at the dogs and I would walk in wearing this leather glove kind of thing. He would give a command and the dog would sink his teeth into the leather thing. That was one of my favorite jobs. We would go all over, to the Village, to the rich people on Madison Avenue. I liked it, because I'd meet lots of people and they'd always look at me like they couldn't believe what I was doing; they couldn't believe anyone would do that.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds like something out of a Mickey Rourke movie, like the two down-and-out guys in Pope of Greenwich Village.

[A] Rourke: Like me and my friend Little Eddie: Eddie was this 4'6" Cuban. He was kind of puppy-dog-eyed, a little like a Cuban Al Pacino, but hairier. He was the only one from Miami I saw after I left. When I'd been in New York for about a year, I was lonely and I asked him to come up. He stayed with me at the Marlton. But the thing with Eddie, man, Eddie just wanted to make a big score. It was just like in Pope--Eddie was fucking Paulie. Every day he wanted to be Al Capone. He knew every gangster that ever lived. He knew what family they were with. But nobody could take him serious, you know, because he looked kind of funny, and it was hard to get into the business he wanted on the level he wanted to get in. He didn't want to be no penny-ante guy. He wanted to be well connected--which was hard for a 4'6" Cuban with a short-man complex. He'd be talking to somebody, you know, and all of a sudden he'd go [snarling], "Yo, man, I don't think you really meant what you said!" Real tough. And he would say that to anybody, you know? Any time, anywhere.

[Q] Playboy: He sounds like a screenwriter's dream.

[A] Rourke: It was also very funny when we would walk down the street. I'm not that tall, maybe 5'11-1/2". But back then, I had shoes on me that would make me look, like, 6'5". Everybody wore platform shoes, you know, and I had mine handmade. I'd save up all my fucking money from whatever I was doing and have these shoes made in Miami by this Cuban lady we all used to go to. They were, like, six-inch heels with eight-inch platforms. Black, pink, silver, turquoise. Back home, we'd all fucking wear them and go up to the strip in Miami. We'd get dressed in tight pants, cutoff shirts and these platform shoes. We were all wearing those crazy fucking clothes when David Bowie came out with Ziggy Stardust.

[Q] Playboy: The androgynous look?

[A] Rourke: Yeah, and it was wild because none of us were androgynous types. We were far from that shit. But I didn't know why I was dressed that way back in Miami. I just liked the dudes I was hanging with because they were loose, man; they weren't uptight. We'd get out at fucking midnight, then fix ourselves up like a bunch of women, we'd be at the mirror blow-drying our hair for a fucking hour. We'd all maybe lift weights together for an hour or two. We'd get like a bunch of Indians; it was a fucking ritual. During the day, we'd go down to 48th Street Beach. We used to wear little tiny bathing suits, lay out in the sun, take half a dozen Seconals. We were big on downers back then. Everybody would talk in slow motion. Everybody would be checking themselves out when they spoke. You never heard so much lying and bragging. Everybody was into being cool, being tough, getting down and getting high.

[Q] Playboy: What were you lying about?

[A] Rourke: Lying about everything! "I got the best fucking grass in the world!" Or "I picked up the most beautiful fucking girl!" "I didn't fuck your girlfriend"--when I really did, you know. Stuff like that. Back then, there was nothing on our minds but a good fucking time, a good fucking girl. I wasn't worried about my next deal, what time I have to be at work in the morning. It was a very free, very wild time. There was a lot of shit going down. Jim Morrison was real big around that time, and you'd hear his music on the beach.

It went on night and day. You'd lay out on the beach all day long, wiped out of your mind. You'd just go and go. When you were high like that, the waves were special, the way they felt. I mean, it's wrong now. I'm totally antidrugs. I had my fling, but it wasn't for that long.

[Q] Playboy: Everybody's been there, don't you think?

[A] Rourke: Well, like I say, I had my moments. And I remember watching my friends, a couple of friends who couldn't fight very good. They would get stoned out on Tuinals or Seconals and they'd be wearing their fucking platform shoes and they'd be fighting, beating the shit out of each other, getting fucking killed and not feeling it. They'd be fucking laughing about it, you know? It was wild.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever go over the edge?

[A] Rourke: Never. I would always make sure I was in a certain amount of control, especially where I noticed the people I was around were out of control. It was just...just an incredible time. All those legends, a lot of them aren't around now. A lot of them are dead.

[Q] Playboy: Back to Little Eddie, who came up from Miami to keep you company in the Marlton. We left you two walking down the street in the Big Apple.

[A] Rourke: Right. The thing is, I'd have these giant platforms on, and Eddie, who's 4'6", would be walking next to me. Only even in his platforms, he still looked small. So we'd be walking down the street and he would look up and go, "Yo, man, how come you're doing this to me, man? Why you gotta wear them fucking things, man?" I'd say, like, "Eddie, we're out tonight, man. There's fucking broads around, man!" And Eddie would say, "Look, man, if you gotta wear them fucking things, then step off the curb when the girls walk by." That way, see, he didn't look as tiny.

Because we came from Miami, we were really out of it. We didn't even dress for the weather. We had blue-jean jackets and we were parking cars with these high-heeled fucking shoes on. Eddie had it especially tough, 'cause in Cuba, it's really hot. We'd be freezing our fucking balls off in the little wooden shack, and Eddie'd go, "What are we doin', man? I thought you knew people!" I'd say, "Eddie, wait. Give me a little while." He'd go, "Man, I want to meet some fucking people now!." But I was afraid to talk to anybody. I didn't know anybody. Finally, a couple of nights, me and Eddie went to a couple of heavyweight restaurants.

[Q] Playboy: You hung out at restaurants because he wanted to break into the Mafia and be seen in the right places?

[A] Rourke: Well, I don't want to say that. Let's just say he wanted to get hooked up. He wanted to make his bones. At that time, the acting wasn't going so hot for me, and we were so broke we were going to gay bars every Wednesday and Thursday when they had the food with happy hour. That's how we'd eat. So I was kind of going along with Eddie; but in another part of me, there was this commitment to my mother and my grandmother not to wind up like this. I had that always hanging over my head. And so Eddie and I--I've got to watch what I say here--we took a few, ah, gigs that we failed miserably at. Then I decided I didn't want to continue in that way of life, and Eddie did. I ended up getting a night job as a bouncer somewhere, the Cheetah or Adam's Apple, and Eddie, I don't know, I think he got into some things and went to Frisco for a while. I don't know.... Little Eddie, where are you, man?

[Q] Playboy: Throughout all of this, what kept you going?

[A] Rourke: What kept me going? I used to say to myself, "Well, if I don't make it, man, I'll go back to Miami." At least I'd be amongst my own. I always had the guys. Then, one day, I fucking got out of bed and I thought, Who the fuck am I kidding? I could never go back to Miami. I left when I needed to leave. There is nothing there. And I realized, I can't run back. I can't quit like I quit a couple of other things in my life, like I quit boxing.

[Q] Playboy: You wanted to be a boxer?

[A] Rourke: It's all I wanted to do from when I was 15 to about 18.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any fights?

[A] Rourke: Four. Police Athletic League.

[Q] Playboy: How did you do?

[A] Rourke: I won all four. But I have to tell you, I've sparred hundreds of rounds in the past couple of years. I still go to the gym and spar. To me, it's a form of physical aggression that's very fulfilling, because I'm in a profession where I would never put my hands on anyone. What I really love is the sport, the science. It's just very frustrating when I have to stop training every day and go away for three, four months to do a movie. That's when I start smoking, staying up all night, worrying, hyperventilating and getting coo-coo.

[Q] Playboy: Do you regret leaving the ring?

[A] Rourke: I've always felt bad about it, because I quit for the wrong reasons. I quit for lack of discipline and maybe lack of guidance, lack of respect for myself.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel as if you've failed?

[A] Rourke: Yeah, it still bothers me. One of my best friends in the world is Ray Mancini. I love Raymond. We're like brothers. I flew out to his retirement party to be with him. I remember, I was there among all these boxers and I was thinking, Ah, these fucking guys, they made it, they stuck with it. I quit--I never knew how far I could have gone. I could have gone a long way. But then, I'm sitting there with Raymond after everyone leaves the party, and he gets real depressed. I say, "What's the matter, Raymond?" And he says, "Mickey, I'm confused. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I'm trying to do business, but I don't know...." He had just retired at 24 and accomplished what very few could accomplish, to be champion of the world. And he's sitting there talking to me and I ain't got no answers. So I'm thinking, Maybe I shouldn't have been so hard on myself for giving boxing up.

[Q] Playboy: During this time, you had trouble with your five stepbrothers, didn't you? And your father abandoned you for 17 years.

[A] Rourke: Yeah, I grew up with six brothers in the same room.... But look, everybody has certain things that happen in his childhood, and lots of people have hard knocks, harder than me. Just because I'm an actor and I'm in the public eye, I don't want to overdramatize the fucking things that have happened in my life. I don't want any sympathy.

[Q] Playboy: But these things had to affect you. How did you deal with them?

[A] Rourke: There's not much you can do at that age. You either click on or you click off. And I clicked off for years. When you're a kid, you wake up in the morning or try to go to sleep at night and you say, "Why me? Why is this happening to me?" Now I've got to look at it and, honestly, all I can say is I got two legs and two arms and a brother who's healthy, a sister, my mother is alive. I look at it that way now. But then, it was a nightmare.

[Q] Playboy: But why do some people get out of the nightmare while others never do?

[A] Rourke: It's hard to say. I look at my brother Joe, who'd been sick for many years but who's still around. He got cancer when he was a kid and he's still got it, but it's in remission. It was painful to see my brother totally click off.

[Q] Playboy: What form did that take?

[A] Rourke: No ambition in life. I always wanted to be a big man, but Joe didn't. Joe's a biker. That's his whole life. He fixes them up and he rides every day. I'm not the most responsible guy, but when it comes to the way I go about my work, I'm responsible. Because in the end, even if there's a little riffraff here and there, I'm going to try my hardest to give what I can, because there's a certain amount of pride.

[Q] Playboy: Where is that pride from?

[A] Rourke: I think it's instilled in you at a very early age. When you have to bend, you think, I'm going to bend, but I'm not going to break. And you channel that as you grow older. I used that same--what's the word?--principle when I walked into auditions and said, "This motherfucker is not going to break me."

You have to understand: When I had my first couple of auditions in New York, I'd meet these lightweight assholes, and as soon as they started asking me dumb questions, I'd just look at them. They'd say, "What have you been doing?" I didn't know the game. I'd go, "Ah, nothin'," and that would be the end of the conversation. I didn't know that you were supposed to be charming, to sell yourself. And so, after 40 or 50 of those, I realized, "Hey, you got to go in there and get up this guy's ass and kiss it."

[Q] Playboy: You don't £seem like a guy who has kissed a lot of ass.

[A] Rourke: I've kissed just enough to get by, you could say. But I had never sold myself before, because I didn't give a fuck. So it was hard for me. It took me 78 auditions before I finally got a gig.

[Q] Playboy: What pushed you over the top?

[A] Rourke: One day I just woke up and said, "Motherfucker, you're not going to get a part. If you don't kiss a certain amount of ass, then they win. You gotta go in and steal that role." It's black and white in this fucking business. There ain't no gray. All the gray is doing soap operas.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think your life in the streets helped you survive life in Hollywood once you made it?

[A] Rourke: Well, I can't be threatened by the people in this business; I've already been there with the real motherfuckers. I'm not going to get upset when some guy with bad breath and cream cheese running down his chin tells me how he won't give me this or he wants me to do that. I had a certain purity of feeling when I started acting, but I'm never going to have that again, because the damage is done. You find out it's all a big, fucking hustle.

In my early 20s, I just couldn't wait to get up in the morning and learn my lines and work on all my little Stanislavski Method stuff. I had my fucking dreams about "One day, one day, all the shit's going to come together and it's going to be great!" I really thought that it mattered that you did the work. But it's a lot of bullshit, and if anybody says it isn't, then he's full of shit.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about the profession of acting?

[A] Rourke: I'd say you have some moments when you think acting is not a very manly profession, because the people you have to deal with are on such a low level. You have to accept circumstances and situations that normally you couldn't stand for.

[Q] Playboy: How do you stay sane in the face of that?

[A] Rourke: I make sure I keep in touch with real people, the friends who matter to me.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't there a bit of controversy a little while ago when one of those friends made news?

[A] Rourke: You're talking about my man Chuck Zito. Chuck is a Hell's Angel. He and I are very close. He worked for me on Year of the Dragon. He got me to work on time, helped me get to bed on time at night. But most of all, he was a friend. He was hired through the studio, because I had it in my contract at the time that he worked for me.

[Q] Playboy: What happened?

[A] Rourke: Chuck fell on some hard times. There was a whole thing that went down in New York with the Angels and the D.A. Chuck went away for over a year. He was up in New York in jail. When he was inside, he called me every day and asked how the movie was going. I love the man and I know he loves me. Just because he's a Hell's Angel doesn't mean he's some kind of raving lunatic. The most important fucking thing to me is friendship, and Chuck is a friend of mine. I know if I was in trouble, he would stand by me. So if he's in trouble, I've got to stand by him. Just because I'm in the public eye, I can't run away from that.

[Q] Playboy: But you caught some shit for standing by him.

[A] Rourke: Yeah, I caught some shit. You know, my agent and everybody was saying, "Stay away from those guys. You're going to ruin your career." But what would they rather I'd be doing? Would they rather I'd be living in a mansion above the Beverly Hills Hotel, having Hollywood parties, sticking cocaine up my nose and fucking 17-year-old models? Promising girls screen tests behind closed doors just because I wore a suit and went to the right places? Don't give me that shit, man. You want to talk about illegal acts, I know a lot of guys in this business who are a hell of a lot more corrupt. So, you want to talk about guilt by association, how about all of them lying, twofaced motherfuckers in the business?

[Q] Playboy: For a guy who gets $1,000,000 a picture, you have a lot of contempt for the movie industry.

[A] Rourke: Listen, man, I didn't like my foreman when I was in construction. I didn't like the guys around the whorehouse when I worked in the whorehouse. I didn't like punching the clock when I had to punch a clock. I didn't even like the customers when I laid linoleum. I'm a free man, Jack; I can do what I want to do when I want to do it. I did it when I wasn't getting paid and I do it now.

[Q] Playboy: For better or worse, though, this is the business you're in.

[A] Rourke: Definitely. And I think that to be part of this business, you have to be full of shit. That's why, at times, I think there's a part of me that's full of shit because I am involved with this.

[Q] Playboy: How will people in the business react to what you're saying here?

[A] Rourke: You know, my agent says, "Mickey, you can't talk about the industry like that." And I say, "Hey, man, they don't have to go to bed with me every night. When I fucking pull the sheets up and close my eyes, I gotta live with my decisions and the way I feel, and if I can't express that, then it's too fucking bad."

[Q] Playboy: Haven't you ever compromised in making a movie you didn't want to?

[A] Rourke: No. Body Heat was the movie that got things going for me, and even then, I took a hard line. The scenes were written very well, the way we wanted them. Then came Diner. This was a movie, I think, that was good for me to make at the time. A lot of people really like that movie.

[Q] Playboy: Don't you?

[A] Rourke: It's funny, you know: The movie did what [director] Barry [Levinson] wanted it to do, but at the time, I had no idea what he wanted. I didn't understand a lot of those guys in the movie. To me, it was make-believe. I would never hang out with those kinds of guys. But, then, my character really didn't, either. He was on his way out, so it was OK.

[Q] Playboy: Then you were an outsider on screen and off.

[A] Rourke: Yeah. I used to talk to [co-star Steve] Guttenberg and just crack up. I never spent much time with a kid like him. To me, he was so square that it made me laugh. I liked him. I enjoyed just sitting in a room talking to a guy like that.

[Q] Playboy: The part in Diner that people still talk about is the cock-in-the-popcorn scene. Your date sticks her hand into the box and finds a surprise. Watching you explain your way out of that--and make it sound convincing--we get the feeling that smooth talk comes naturally to you.

[A] Rourke: It goes back to the childhood thing. If you grow up in harmony, let's call it, you don't have to lie. But if you live in disharmony, then you have to lie and lie good. When I was a young kid, I would start talking to friends and I'd make shit up that would amaze myself. I couldn't tell the truth if you hit me over the fucking head with it. I'd be lying and really believing it. I noticed a lot of other guys doing it, too. When you're so fucked up, confused and unhappy, you have to make shit up to feel good. I think a certain amount of that probably helps me say other people's lines with conviction. That was the difference between me and my brother Joe. I would rather lie than get hit. My brother Joe would never lie, no matter what.

[Q] Playboy: Did you admire him for that?

[A] Rourke: I really did. But not enough to tell the truth. I'd do anything to get out of punishment; are you kidding?

[Q] Playboy: Much of your next film, Rumble Fish, directed by Francis Coppola, revolved around the relationship between brothers. Your character, the Motorcycle Boy, wanted to take care of Matt Dillon, his kid brother, but he also knew he couldn't stick around to do it. Was there some of that going on in your life, as well?

[A] Rourke: There was a very close parallel with my life, with the whole brother thing. At the time Joey was going through his first bout with cancer, when he didn't know if his time was gonna be up, I wasn't watching out for him the way I should have. I was too concerned with learning my craft and all that. Joey was actually given the last rites twice. So his living, to me, is like a gift. I guess I'm trying to make up for lost time now, because I feel responsible. I bought a house he can live in, fix his motorcycle up. There was other stuff going on during that time, too.

[Q] Playboy: What else?

[A] Rourke: During shooting, they came to me on the set and told me my father was dying. So there was that whole thing going on with identity--who was my father? I was just starting to know him. We had just started writing. I was going to ask him to come visit. So I'd lost the opportunity to start to be buddies with him. It was too late. Too late for me and too late for Motorcycle Boy, too. It made me feel, you know, like there was no reason for me to be here anymore, and I used that in the film. It was a painful time. Dennis Hopper's father actually died during the making of the movie, and my father died right after. Coppola's son died a short time ago. I think a part of Francis himself was Motorcycle Boy. It was a very innovative film, Rumble Fish, like nothing before it. It was very symbolic and mystical. In Europe, when I went over there later, kids were still talking about it. Of course, nobody in this country went to sec it.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about that?

[A] Rourke: Well, look at Coppola. Francis, God bless him, has the biggest balls in the world. He doesn't care what anybody thinks. There may be a part of him that wants people to like what he does, I'm sure, but he has the guts to hang his balls over the fence and do something different. So I really learned a lot hanging around guys like Coppola and [Michael] Cimino, because of all of the shit they get from the people who don't like them, the people who are out to get them. Seeing how they dealt with that was very important to me.

[Q] Playboy:Year of the Dragon, made with Cimino, was attacked viciously by critics. How did that affect you, the star?

[A] Rourke: I wanted to quit and open up a fucking motorcycle shop. I just didn't want to expose myself to the aggravation. I was disgusted with what the critics, those cowardly motherfuckers, did to the movie because of Cimino. They tore Dragon apart, and instead, they praise these safe fucking movies--like most of the movies up for the awards that year.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think they went after the film the way they did?

[A] Rourke: It's very obvious. The critics have a vendetta against Michael Cimino. If they try to deny that, then they're lying cocksuckers. There was a certain amount of truth that my character, Stanley White, portrayed. There's this strong sense of truth, this sense of honor, in all of Michael's movies. And this offends a lot of those people, because it's something they don't have.

[Q] Playboy: You're saying their attacks are ultimately personal?

[A] Rourke: Of course. You've got the elitist critics in New York and Los Angeles that the rest of the United States follow. Ever since Heaven's Gate, they've all hated Michael. Why? Because he refused to buckle under; he refused to apologize for trying to make a great movie. There was a lot in Heaven's Gate that was very beautiful and very real. You saw an era depicted the way it was. He went off a little with the money, but, hey, he didn't put a gun to their heads and tell them to give it to him. He took all the heat afterward.

[Q] Playboy: We gather you don't worry a lot about reviews.

[A] Rourke: The God's honest truth--and I'm not just saying it to say it--they can say great things about me and they can say shit. I don't recognize them. I did at one time. But now, they could call me great, brilliant, out of this world, from another fucking planet and it would not mean a fucking thing to me. I mean, who are these people? Where did they come from? What did they do? What are their credentials? Yet they're in a position to inform the public! Even the fucking schmuck at playboy, the guy who reviewed Year of the Dragon, what rock did he crawl out from under? I'd like to put them all in a fucking room and have them tell me all this shit to my face, [Playboy went to press too late to review Year of the Dragon; Rourke is mistaken.]

[Q] Playboy: Pretty bitter.

[A] Rourke: Real bitterness is when you try to act for critics. That's the worst. Then you might as well just blow your brains out and get it over with.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Rourke: Because I've watched a number of actors I've admired over the years turn so bitter that after a while, they'd do anything. They give in to their insecurities, sell out, do projects because they think they might be successful, big hits or whatever. They turn into what the powerhouses in Hollywood want them to turn into. And that's the worst crime of all. If you're angry, at least you're still searching. You're still fucking passionate.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of big hits, is it true you were offered Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun and passed on both?

[A] Rourke:Top Gun wasn't officially offered. They sent me the script, but I just couldn't see myself saying most of those lines stuck inside a machine. And with all due respect to Beverly Hills Cop, there were lots of movies they offered me $1,000,000 or more to do, but, hey, I didn't believe in what the message was.

[Q] Playboy: But you believed in 9-1/2 Weeks?

[A] Rourke: At the time, 9-1/2 Weeks was the first script I'd seen in a while that excited me. I took the script for the right reasons, but I wasn't in total control.

[Q] Playboy: There was a lot of talk about your relationship with your leading lady in 9-1/2 Weeks, Kim Basinger. Just to put those rumors to rest, how would you say you got along?

[A] Rourke: We got along.

[Q] Playboy: That's it?

[A] Rourke: Uh-huh.

[Q] Playboy: There were reports of friction between you.

[A] Rourke: Everybody else needed to create that. In fact, we never even spent any time together. A lot of that movie was so intimate physically, emotionally and psychologically, she and I made the decision not to be close off the set. We made a choice and we both stuck to it.

[Q] Playboy: Some people thought you two actually made love on screen. Did you?

[A] Rourke: I kept my pants on the whole movie. Watch it closely and you'll see. People see what they want to see.

[Q] Playboy: Actually, there were things people didn't get to see in that movie. A lot of sexual scenes between you and Basinger supposedly ended up on the cutting-room floor. Why?

[A] Rourke: What happened was that nobody had a lot of belief in the movie. Everybody was very timid about what kind of movie it was and upset because it didn't really fit into a pattern. It wasn't a teenage movie, with all those phony little brats who hang out, and it wasn't that high-tech s-f crap and it wasn't a Steven Spielberg thing. It just wasn't a formula picture, so they were nervous. I respect [director] Adrian [Lyne], but he was commercially successful with Flashdance and I think he got caught up in trying to reproduce that. I wanted to go a lot further than the movie went.

[Q] Playboy: What did you want to do?

[A] Rourke: I wanted to go all the way with it. I wanted to show every fucking emotion that was going on with me and Kim.

[Q] Playboy: What would an audience have seen in your version?

[A] Rourke: There's a certain moment when you make love with a woman, a certain way you look at each other afterward, certain things you say. Little intimacies happen: Maybe there's a food that you eat after you do it, or a walk you take, or maybe you'll read a book together. But these certain little things are the reason the two of you are together. Even in the act itself, there's a special thing going on, a secret at the heart of it. I'm talking about with someone you're obsessed with, that you love--not just a shot in the night. That's what this movie was about--an obsession. There are certain paranoias and fantasies, certain delicate, subtle things that go on between two people that I wanted to delve into and capture. I was hoping personally we could go further with these elements--but that wouldn't sell as many tickets as me humping Kim on a coffee table.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that kind of emotional detail was just too intense to film?

[A] Rourke: No, I think the powers that be probably don't understand it. They've probably never had the experience. Maybe they're too busy up everybody's ass to deal with that in their own lives; I don't know. I was just a hired hand.

[Q] Playboy: Looking back, do you regret having made that movie?

[A] Rourke: I'm not ashamed I made it, no, especially when you look at what else was around that year. Maybe one day I'll make the movie that goes as far as I want it to go. I know I will. But I don't want to take anything away from Adrian's effort. It's just that he had his reasons for doing 9-1/2 Weeks and I had mine. There was a lot of trouble making that movie.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of trouble?

[A] Rourke: For one thing, we were working with a kind of blue smoke--used for a hazy effect--that was getting everyone sick. I couldn't get out of bed for two or three days and they still wanted me to work. Two doctors came over and I had to tell them how sick I was. Even the director had to go to the hospital one day. So there was all this pressure and tension, a lot of disharmony and a lot of people pointing fingers. On top of that, we had five or six producers sitting there on the set, telling the director when to cut.

[Q] Playboy: Between the critics' slaying Dragon and the producers' cutting up 9-1/2 Weeks, was it tough for you to get up for another movie?

[A] Rourke: I sat for over a year before I took Angel Heart.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you jump back in?

[A] Rourke: 'Cause I was broke.

[Q] Playboy: That's hard to believe.

[A] Rourke: Look, six months ago, you had more money than I did.

[Q] Playboy: We doubt that.

[A] Rourke: No? I had $300. Listen, I've got to take less money to do the kind of movies I want to do and still be able to live with myself. Since working with Francis on Rumble Fish, I've been heading in the direction I want to go; I'm not giving in to money to please the masses. 'Cause in the end, even if I could be making a million more on material I don't like, I'd just spend that million, too. I'm never gonna be a wealthy man, because I spend my money and give it away too quickly.

[Q] Playboy: You're supposed to be a soft touch. True?

[A] Rourke: Call it whatever you want. Sometimes I get a chunk of money and it's hard for me to let it sit.

[Q] Playboy: Where does it go?

[A] Rourke: It depends. My family, my brother. Plus, I got a very, very expensive motorcycle habit. You know, some people meditate, some people like to chant, some people smoke cigars or stand on their head--what I do is ride my motorcycle. I can get on the bike and get clearer than anywhere else.

[Q] Playboy: That still must leave a little something in the bank.

[A] Rourke: A lot of money goes into my own research for the movies I do. You'd be surprised at what that adds up to.

[Q] Playboy: There's a story about your buying $10,000 worth of clothes and a pinkie ring to try out for your role in The Pope of Greenwich Village.

[A] Rourke: I also bought $12,000 worth of suits for 9-1/2 Weeks. But they weren't what the director wanted. So now they're hanging in a closet. I sort of fancied the stuff when I bought it.

[Q] Playboy: Your movie, A Prayer for the Dying, is about a guy trying to stay true to himself, isn't it?

[A] Rourke: It's about an IRA man who loses the commitment he had for what he's doing--not because he doesn't believe in the cause but because he takes part in an act that kills innocent bystanders.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about what's going on in Northern Ireland?

[A] Rourke: I think the British should get the fuck out. That's the way I feel. It's very much like what happened in the civil rights movement in this country. If you have an Irish Catholic name, it's like it used to be being black in the South. If you can't be Irish and Catholic in Northern Ireland, what the fuck are you supposed to do? One of the guys I've been talking to--I shouldn't mention his name--was describing what life over there was like. He was in Long Kesh prison when all those men, Bobby Sands and the Nine, died in the hunger strike. You know the kinds of things they were asking for? The right to wear their own clothes at all times. The right to associate freely with other political prisoners. As the song about them goes: "I'll wear no convict's uniform nor meekly serve my time, that England might brand Ireland's fight 800 years of crime."

[Q] Playboy: If you were over there, how do you think you'd react?

[A] Rourke: If I didn't have a family, I could understand why you'd join the IRA. On the other hand, it's very easy for me to sit here in Los Angeles and discuss what the IRA is doing over in Northern Ireland, because I'm not there. It's a little hypocritical even speaking about it, because I'm not there having to lay my life on the line. All I'm doing is talking about it.

[Q] Playboy: Would you like to be identified with the IRA as Sylvester Stallone is with Vietnam and vengeance?

[A] Rourke: No. I don't want to make a movie about a macho fucking guy. I don't want to be an Irish Rambo. This will be a film about a man who happened to be born in a country where he was an Irishman yet not allowed to be Irish. I should thank my lucky stars I was born here. Anyway, it's another movie that six people will go see.

[Q] Playboy: That seems to be your M.O.

[A] Rourke: Well, it's like the other night. I was watching the two sweater guys on TV, the fat guy and the skinny one----

[Q] Playboy: Ebert and Siskel?

[A] Rourke: Yeah. I like the guy with the glasses; which one is he?

[Q] Playboy: Ebert.

[A] Rourke: Ebert, right. Nice guy. Anyway, I was watching the two boys on TV talking about the difference between Woody Allen's movies and Spielberg's movies. And they were saying, well, the difference is that Spielberg makes movies for the masses and Woody Allen makes movies for himself. To tell you the truth, I make movies for myself, too. Because we're only here for a cup of coffee, you know. I cannot live this one life that I have trying to please everybody. I can't make my choices on each film I do based on whether it's going to make ten zillion dollars at the box office. I really don't give a fuck.

[Q] Playboy: Is there one role you're dying to play? One movie you want to make more than any other one?

[A] Rourke: Yes--Homeboy. It's a movie I've been working on for years. It's a boxing movie, but not a gung-ho Rocky type and not about a champion, like Raging Bull. It's been turned down by the major studios, but we've finally found a producer.

[Q] Playboy: What is it about?

[A] Rourke: It's based on a guy who used to box in the same gym as I did in Miami. He had all the tools; he just had a little trouble upstairs. He was incarcerated at a young age for doing nothing. He shouldn't have gotten the time that he got. After that, it was one thing after another. There was no guidance in his life. There was no love. And if you don't have a certain amount of love, you're going to turn out like a piece of shit. I really believe that.

[Q] Playboy: What happened to him?

[A] Rourke: The last I heard, Johnny was in bad shape. He's either in prison now or on skid row.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you want to play him so badly? What does he mean to you?

[A] Rourke: He was my hero. I never said more than ten words to the guy. I was afraid of him then, or what he represented. I was so in awe of the guy, I just couldn't talk to him. But at the same time, there was some dark fucking thing when I looked at him. When I looked at him, I was looking at myself. I knew if I kept going--because I had too many distractions, I had such a lack of discipline--I would end up just like him.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds like the film your entire life has been leading up to. When do you start?

[A] Rourke: We're going to start shooting September 1, 1987. I'll take half a year off to fight. It's going to be great. I'll be putting in roles for a lot of my buddies.

[Q] Playboy: You write parts for friends?

[A] Rourke: All I can.

[Q] Playboy: Why is that?

[A] Rourke: That's what it's all about.

[Q] Playboy: Because you want to give them work? Or because you think they'll be best for the movie?

[A] Rourke: Hey, most of my friends who don't act are more interesting than half the guys getting million-dollar salaries.

[Q] Playboy: That's a kind of success--being powerful enough in Hollywood to give your pals work. So it's been worth it, including the sacrifices?

[A] Rourke: Success has changed me in one way, exposed me to a certain level of independence--a kind of selfishness that I'm ashamed of. I got ants in my pants. But the fact is, when I'm working with people I want to, on a project that I respect, I really do love acting. And that's all that matters. It's almost as good as catching somebody with a good left hook.

[Q] Playboy: Almost?

[A] Rourke: That's right, baby. Maybe better.

"What do I do? Have I ever shot a producer? What the fuck have I done to get a bad-boy image?"

"When I was a kid, I'd make shit up that would amaze myself. I couldn't tell the truth if you hit me over the fucking head with it."

"I've watched actors I've admired over the years sell out. That's the worst crime of all. If you're angry, at least you're still fucking passionate."