His face is ravaged now, and his biceps are so huge, his arms don’t hang straight. He’s got at least seven tattoos, including a tiger head, Chinese symbol, bull skull, and a shamrock. Kim Basinger once called him “The Human Ashtray.”
Though he’s now 65 years old, he earned a reputation as a notorious Hollywood hell raiser tooling around town in a white Rolls-Royce with a fully paid-up entourage of Cubans in gold chains, and then threw it all away.
Before all that, he boxed. As a release from a miserable and violent home life, he trained at the same gym from where Muhammad Ali came and, by the time he was 16, he was sparring the number one ranked middleweight, Luis Rodriguez, before his world title fight. After two severe concussions nixed a career in boxing, he fell into acting. Bit parts came that grew in importance: Body Heat in 1981, the cult classic, “Diner,” followed by “Rumble Fish” with Francis Ford Coppola, and the film noir thriller, “Angel Heart” played opposite Robert De Niro. It was the 1986 erotic thriller, 9½ Weeks” with Kim Basinger that sealed his reputation as a sex symbol.
And then it fell apart. He became difficult to work with, fighting with directors and producers, and made some bad decision of an epic scale: He turned down Kevin Costner’s part in The Untouchables, as well as great parts in the movies, Platoon and Silence of the Lambs. A few years later, he rejected John Travolta’s part in Pulp Fiction.
In a bit of irony,Mickey Rourke resurrected his career by going back to boxing by playing the lead in the 2008 film, The Wrestler, a raw, almost autobiographical performance that was hard to watch, and riveting all at the same time. The performance earned him a Golden Globe Award. Through the rough times, Rourke was kept sane by his dogs and paid homage to them in his acceptance speech: “I’d like to thank all my dogs, the ones who are here and the ones who aren’t here any more, because sometimes when a man’s alone, all you got is your dog. And they’ve meant the world to me.” One dog in particular was, perhaps, Rourke’s “heart dog,” an 18-year-old Chihuahua named “Loki.” Some say a Chihuahua was an unusual choice for a former sex symbol and notorious Hollywood bad boy, but Loki was his constant companion and often accompanied Rourke down the red carpet.
Dog people will understand this next part as reported by the UK’s Telegraph in 2009: Rourke credits Loki’s father, a Chihuahua called Beau Jack, with saving his life during a low point in his career. “One time things were so bad I didn’t want to be here any more. Then I see Beau Jack looking at me as if to say, ‘But we need you.'” When Beau Jack died in 2002, Rourke attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for 45 minutes then took his body to a nearby church to be blessed.”
Real men love Chihuahuas. See a photo of Rourke with his beloved Loki here.
Image: David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons