Mickey Rourke is the Comeback Kid: Part 1

Mickey Rourke's time has finally come. More than a quarter of a century after he catapulted to stardom in Barry Levinson's "Diner" and Francis Ford Coppola's "Rumble Fish," the man who never won an Oscar but pretty much retired the trophy for America's Craziest Living Actor, may get that second act that few artists who self-destruct at an early age ever live to see.

When I had dinner with Rourke in L.A. a few years ago, he spent two hours at a crowded Sunset Strip eatery, virtually unnoticed. Here in Toronto, after getting raves for his tough-but-tender performance in Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," Rourke is the center of attention again. The film was the big sale of the festival, going to Fox Searchlight for roughly $4 million after winning the Golden Lion in Venice last week. And wherever Rourke has gone here, he's drawn a crowd of photographers.

Nearly back to his regular 190-pound fighting weight after gaining 35 pounds to play the part, wearing a blue pinstripe jacket with little blond ringlets in his hair, he's hard to miss. As we sipped coffee in an upstairs lobby at the Four Season Hotel here, actors, producers, agents and wannabe screenwriters all stopped by, eager to offer hugs, congratulations or pass along hand-written notes, hoping to interest him in one new project or another.

Maybe this time Rourke can handle the spotlight. Earlier in his career, he fumbled the ball, taking horrible parts, partying all night, spending years fruitlessly trying to revive his schoolboy boxing career and telling anyone who would listen how much disdain he had for the art of acting. Although he's still as eccentric as ever--taking his favorite Chihuahua, Loki, whom he also calls "No. 1," with him nearly everywhere he goes--he says he's been in therapy for 13 years and can finally control the anger he'd carried around after surviving a turbulent and violent childhood.

In "The Wrestler," Rourke plays Randy (The Ram) Robinson, a beaten-down wrestler 20 years past his prime, his body scarred and gone to seed, unable to sustain any real relationships, least of all with his daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood, who wants nothing to do with him. The part hit home.

"Let's put it this way, Randy the Ram was somebody 20 years ago and so was Mickey Rourke," he told me. "When you used to be somebody and you aren't anybody anymore, you live in what my doctor calls a state of shame. You don't want to go out of the house. You hate just going to the store and having to stand in line, because inevitably someone will stare at you and say, 'Hey, didn't you used to be someone in the movies?' "

Rourke doesn't mince words: "I lost everything. My house, my wife, my credibility, my career." He shrugs. "I even lost my entourage, which is when you know things are really bad. I just all had all this anger from my childhood, which was really shame, not anger, and used it as armor and machismo to cover up my wounds. Unfortunately, the way I acted really frightened people, although it was really just me who was scared. But I was like this person who was short-circuited and I didn't know how to fix myself."

So how did Rourke turn his life around?

Rourke finally found a therapist in Los Angeles--he simply refers to him as Steve--who helped him deal with his issues. "I started going to see him all the time, at first three times a week. He was great. Even when I didn't have the money, he kept seeing me. It was like he believed in me. I wouldn't be in the business if it wasn't for him and my agent, David Unger at ICM. I was done. Everyone but them thought I was too difficult, too crazy."

Rourke says he finally figured out how to let go of his anger and shame. "You just can't go through life holding on to all that stuff. I just couldn't live with that boulder on my shoulder." He points toward his heart. "There's still a little man inside of me with a big ax who watches everything. If someone tried to kick my girlfriend's ass or started messing with one of my friends right here, that little man would come out and show himself. But I've learned to keep him inside of me."

Even though it seemed at the time to be the most ruinous escapade of a career filled with ruinous escapades, Rourke firmly believes that, by going back to boxing in the middle of his career, he actually regained his equilibrium. He worked with Freddie Roach, Oscar De La Hoya's fight trainer, who wouldn't put up with the antics Rourke had gotten away with on film sets. "Freddie was no-nonsense," Rourke recalls. "When I started staying out all night, fooling around, he quit. He said, 'I'm going back to Vegas. I don't train fighters to lose.' I had to beg him to stay. I cried like a baby before I could convince him I was serious."

Rourke ended up losing most of his fights, but he found a focus he'd never had. "I started training the way I should and I demanded a discipline of myself that I'd never had. And I've been able to use that ability to concentrate in my acting. It's almost like a kind of self-survival. I was Little Mickey, angry, screaming and yelling, punching at ghosts that weren't even there, saying things I now regret. But I shaped up and look at the great part I got to play in this movie. It really makes a difference having a second chance to do something I once loved but told everyone that I hated."

Rourke said when he walked down the red carpet last week at the Venice Film Festival, he never felt happier. "It's really a nice feeling to be proud of the work you've done. Second chances are a great thing."

Mickey Rourke, Part 2: Actor vs. director

When "The Wrestler" director Darren Aronofsky decided he wanted to go ahead with the film, he remembers having a casting epiphany: The actor who'd be absolutely perfect for the part of an over-the-hill wrestler would be ... Mickey Rourke. Most directors would've immediately run to their shrink and confessed that they had a career death wish. Mickey Rourke? The famously unruly, unreliable, uncontrollable motorcycle-riding madman? Aronofsky knew what he was getting himself into.

"All my friends said, 'No way, you can't do this. You can't make a movie where the whole film depends on Mickey,' " Aronofsky told me yesterday. But the hard-headed director set up a meeting with the actor anyway. "I was very honest with him, like you'd be in a marriage. We looked each other in the eye and I said, 'This is a purely artistic venture. There's no money.' But if he would show up, if he really, really wanted the chance to be a lead in a film again, I wanted to do it with him."

Of course, Rourke remembers the encounter a bit differently. "I was sitting in a restaurant in the West Village that my friend Julian Schnabel turned me on to and this guy shows up, riding a bicycle, with this green helmet and an unbelievably dorky outfit. And I go, 'That must be him. Darren Aronofsky--smart Jewish boy from Brooklyn." Rourke unleashes a derisive snort. "Darren has got to be the worst dresser on the planet. That outfit! He told me it was Prada, but all I could think was--he looks like a UPS delivery guy."

Rourke says Aronofsky didn't waste any time getting to the point. "There were no formalities. He said 'You've been difficult.' I nodded my head. He said, 'You've thrown your career away.' I nodded my head. Whatever he said, I agreed. He tried to make me feel 2 inches tall. He raised his voice and he pointed his finger at me and said, 'You can never disrespect me. You can never [mess] around with girls at night. You can't go to Miami over the holidays because I know you'll be out partying every night. And by the way, I can't pay you because we have no money.' "

Rourke laughs. "That's how bad my career had gotten. I had to listen to all that crap and take it. I kept thinking, 'This guy must really be talented'--I'm leaving out a few choice profanities that Rourke used for emphasis--'to get away with talking to me that way.' But it was OK. I like a guy that's honest from the start. We never had a problem."

But why didn't Rourke butt heads with Aronofsky, the way he did with so many other directors?

Rourke says Aronofsky's self-confidence won him over. "That very first day we met, he said, 'I'll take you to the show. I'll get you a nomination for this part.' And after the first week of work, I believed him. He walked the walk and that got my respect. Darren is like a really demanding football coach, like Vince Lombardi or Tom Landry. He said, 'Give Rourke the ball' and I ran with it."

If Aronofsky thought Rourke needed a little extra motivation, he was not afraid to offer it. When Rourke was doing his scenes with Evan Rachel Wood, the young actress who plays his daughter in the film, Aronofsky would heap praise on her performance. "Then he'd come over to me and say, 'You really sucked. She's totally smoking you. You better bring your A-game to this scene or she's gonna wipe the floor with you,' " Rourke says. "But let me tell you, I loved working with her. She's a real pro and she's going places. She's like Rita Hayworth. I wouldn't have a problem doing a scene with her on Mars."

Rourke had to undergo a grueling training regime to play the part--he says he did all of his wrestling stunts in the film. Even though he's a boxing fan, he now has renewed respect for the physical pounding wrestlers take every night in the ring. "The first time a 260-pound guy threw me across the ring, I knew I was in for it--every tooth in my mouth, the real and the fake ones, ached for days. I went to the chiropractor twice a week. I had three MRIs in two months. That stuff is not fake."

Rourke says his trainer was a former Israeli commando and ex-cage fighter. "He never let up on me. Under no circumstances could I say, 'I don't feel like training today.' He had a key to my hotel room. So even if I had three girls in my bed, it didn't matter. I had to work out. Luckily, he's very religious, so he always took the Sabbath off. That was the only time I got a break."

The critics will be swooning over Rourke's performance in "The Wrestler" for months to come. But I couldn't help but wonder--is this that once-in-a-lifetime performance? Or can Rourke keep his act together long enough to string together enough parts to put his career back on track? If anything could possibly explain the strange sensitivity of his psyche, it's his love for his Chihuahuas. He has six of them, but the one that seems to be a dog of truly Rourkian proportions is Jaws, also known as Little Mickey.

Rourke saved the dog from being put to sleep at an animal shelter. It had been badly abused and was totally uncontrollable, always foaming at the mouth and growling at anyone that tried to come near him. So of course, Rourke tried to give him a kiss. Jaws instantly bit Rourke in the mouth. "There was blood everywhere. It looked like I'd been hit by a car. I had to go get stitches. But I kept him. He just needed to trust someone. For the first few months, he had nightmares every night. When I'd be watching football, he'd jump on my bed and walk up and down my stomach, baring his teeth like he was Predator or something."

And then suddenly one day the dog calmed down and put his head on Rourke's shoulder. Mickey acts it out, reaching out and resting his head on my shoulder in the middle of the Four Seasons lobby. "I'm not saying he was totally normal," Rourke says. "In the winter, you still couldn't put a hoodie on him. And after he growled at everyone on the set, the PAs put a nice little sign up, saying 'Be Careful of White Dog in Mickey's Trailer.' But he wasn't so crazy anymore."

One day Rourke took the dog to meet his therapist. "My therapist said, in his very soft voice, 'Well, Mickey, why do you think you took to Jaws so well?' " Rourke laughs. "I think I've finally figured out what he means."