The movie that sent Mickey Rourke into Hollywood exile: “This piece of shit”
From being celebrated as a potential generational talent in the making to slumming it on reality TV for an easy paycheque, it would be an understatement to suggest that things haven’t worked out for Mickey Rourke the way anyone expected when he first burst onto the scene.
As often tends to be the case when a rugged, roguish, and charismatic young star with an inherent edge and sense of danger begins making waves in Hollywood, it wasn’t long until the Marlon Brando comparisons started being bandied around. Much like the influential icon, Rourke quickly developed a reputation for being a difficult customer.
Still, he was gifted enough to deliver impressive performances in films like Rumble Fish, Angel Heart, 9½ Weeks, and The Pope of Greenwich Village. He rubbed people the wrong way on occasion, but history is overflowing with short-fused performers who still managed to carve out a long and successful career for themselves despite repeatedly displaying behaviour that could generously be called dickish.
However, Rourke was fonder than most when hitting the self-destruct button. He had the world at his feet, but a string of critical duds, commercial disasters, and blatant money-grabbing gigs gradually eroded his star power, while his constant clashes with co-stars and colleagues pushed him further and further towards the industry’s blacklist.
Fittingly, then, it was a multimillion-dollar salary that sent him into exile. Accepting a lucrative offer to star alongside Don Johnson in 1991’s western-tinged noir thriller Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, Rourke admitted that the only reason he joined the picture was also the reason behind his decision to abandon acting and make a living getting punched in the face instead.
“This piece of shit fell in my plate, and they offered me a boatload of money,” he admitted to Alec Baldwin. “And like a whore I took the $4 million or whatever it was and bought a big fucking Elvis Presley house that I couldn’t afford. And I remember doing this film and hating myself every day.”
When he eventually returned from his sabbatical as a boxer, things were never the same again. Of course, matters were hardly helped by Rourke continuing to trash his own movies and instigate feuds with the likes of Robert De Niro and Tom Cruise, with his comeback following an Academy Award-nominated performance in The Wrestler proving to be short-lived.
Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man was the point of no return, with Rourke fleeing Hollywood and returning to discover that things would never be the same. He’s gone from working with Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Barry Levinson to showing up in films with titles like Murder Hotel, Bring the Law, and The Roaring Game, all while stories continue to paint him as a terrible person.
