Mickey “El Marielito” Rourke: An American Icon
By Mike “Rubber Warrior” Plunkett
When “Bad” Brad Berkwitt, RSR’s CEO, Publisher and webmaster suggested I pen a piece on Mickey Rourke I gladly jumped at the opportunity after taking a moment to reflect on arguably the most unique career in motion pictures today. I learned long ago that any suggestion made to me by RSR’s Master Blaster usually has good reason behind it, and it didn’t hurt that “El Marielito” just happened to be one of my all-time favorite performers on a short list that includes the names of such silver screen greats such as Burt Lancaster, Spencer Tracy, Christopher Walken and Burt Reynolds. So it wasn’t all that hard to grasp the brilliance behind the suggestion, given Rourke’s incredible body of work in film and his mostly forgotten sideline two decades ago as a professional prizefighter.
Mickey Rourke was born Philip Andre Rourke JR in Schenectady, New York on September 16th 1952. He was raised Roman Catholic, a faith it is said he still follows closely today. His father, an amateur bodybuilder, left the family when he was six years old. After his parents divorced, his mother married a Miami Beach police officer with five sons from a previous marriage, and moved Rourke, his younger brother and their sister to southern Florida to start their new life.
His teenage years were a time primarily spent focused on sports. He took an interest in self defense while attending the Boys Club of Miami, the place where he had his initial exposure to boxing. Over time he picked up the necessary skills needed to compete and decided to embark on an amateur career, the desire to test himself in actual competition, no doubt fueled by the competitive component of his character, a trait that would ultimately serve him well into adulthood. Rourke won his first match as a rangy 118-pound bantamweight, later pursuing his training at the famed 5th Street Boxing Gym in Miami Beach where the great Muhammad Ali began his career.
Quickly finding his groove as an amateur fighter, at one point, he scored twelve straight stoppage wins. In 1969, Rourke, weighing 140-pounds, sparred with former World Welterweight champion Luis Rodriguez, a seasoned professional with over one hundred bouts to his credit and at the time the number one-rated middleweight contender in the world. Such was the focus, drive and competitive nature of Rourke he received a concussion sparring with the former world champion.
1971 proved to be pivotal year for Mickey Rourke. He suffered another concussion while taking part in the Florida Golden Glove tournament. Having been advised to take a year off from boxing to avoid further risk of injury he put his amateur career on hold. As a senior at Miami Beach High, he had a small role in the Jay W. Jensen play The Serpent despite the fact that his primary focus had been boxing. Not long after he drifted from his first discipline after being offered the role of Green Eyes in the play Deathwatch by a friend who was directing, after the original performer had quit. When he got the part he suddenly became enamored with acting, an unanticipated segue given his previous passion and focus. Eventually he relocated to New York to take formal coaching as an actor with a teacher from the Actors Studio, Sandra Seacat, a respected actor, director and acting teacher.
Rourke’s film debut was a small role in Steven Spielberg’s near-forgotten WWII spoof, 1941. It was a crucial first step that led to other small supporting roles the following year in 1980, but it was his 1981 performance as arsonist Teddy Lewis in Body Heat that would ultimately serve as his break-out big screen performance. Notable roles in movies such as Diner, Rumble Fish and The Pope of Greenwich Village over the next couple of years ensured continued exposure to the public and with the power brokers of Hollywood.
The 1986 film Nine 1/2 Weeks opposite the stunning Kim Basinger underlined Rourke’s unmistakable screen presence and ability to captivate the audience while attaining him sex symbol status. In that film his ability to manipulate moviegoers was commensurate to his character’s ability to manipulate Basinger, a quality not lost on the critics of the day. The next year Rourke again sent shockwaves through the media with his steamy performance as a private investigator opposite a sexually charged vixen of voodoo in Lisa Bonet in 1987’s Angel Heart. Many cited the effort as an exercise of dark titillation but in fact the film was incredible with its many convolutions and revelations. His next effort after that saw him turn a different corner, giving us one of his truly great and profound screen performances as Henry Chinaski, the drunken but unusually perceptive writer/poet non-conformist in the film Barfly opposite Faye Dunaway.
Mickey Rourke had not only caught the attention of Hollywood’s powerbrokers, he had managed to thoroughly embed himself in the minds of film goers, often to polarizing effect. He had, at the time, movie star good looks, yet was not afraid to dress down his appearance for the sake of the art, as evidenced in Barfly. But his successes simply didn’t roll onto the big screen one movie after another. Several efforts failed to catch on at the box office and to a great extent these performances were punctuated with projects that underlined his ability and that special quality he brought to the big screen. Critics that took the low road often focused on this aspect of Rourke’s career as opposed to allowing him the opportunity to hone his craft before us, and at a time when the tabloids were enjoying the fruits of his increasingly notorious off-screen pursuits.
One such forgotten effort was 1988’s Homeboy, an underrated and mostly forgotten gem about Johnny Walker, a down and out professional boxer. I recall seeing this film back in the day. I had always liked Rourke and had read of his youthful pursuit of pugilism as an amateur fighter before becoming an actor and wondered just how believable he’d be as a fighter given his looks and generally perceived celebrity persona.
I remember becoming captivated by his ability to transform over the course of the film, taking on the look and exuding the feel of a heart-felt no-hoper keenly aware that his chance and time were quickly slipping away from his grasp, both in the ring and in life. Beyond being aware that Rourke had once fought as an amateur I had no notion what lurked deep within his soul and that in fact boxing was his first, greatest love. In a very real way, this film would serve as a precursor of sorts for the next few years of his life with Rourke fueling the fires of mainstream criticism by taking a sudden detour off of the red carpet and back into the shadowy, dank and dingy world where he first found true passion.
His 1990 effort in Zalman King’s Wild Orchid again played on his ability to manipulate the senses of viewers with what can be best described as an intensely sensual exercise in erotic intrigue opposite the captivating Carre’ Otis, who would later go on to become his wife. Critics had a field day with this movie and his effort, inferring that as an artist he had sold out, opting for payout as opposed to the pursuit of fine craft. Much was written about Rourke’s off-screen life and the whispers were that success had enabled him to succumb to the darker indulgences that often take the better of men, and that in Wild Orchid moviegoers watched Rourke’s degeneration as an artist and celebrity play out. His acting career eventually became overshadowed by his personal life and career decisions. Directors such as Alan Parker found it difficult and highly stressful to work with him. Parker stated “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 Rourke decided that he “had to go back to boxing” because he “was self-destructing. The announcement was initially viewed by many as an act of ego; the ramblings of a man whose professional brilliance had been overshadowed by dark excess. But in truth it was a case of a man that was in touch with the yearning of his soul and keenly aware that he needed to go back to his beginnings in order to save him. The trappings of fame and success had become just that, trappings, and it was as though he knew enough to tap into the vestige of the passionate young man that first walked into the Boys Club of Miami those many years earlier. He embarked on a professional career telling those that advised against it that entering the ring was a sort of personal test. Years later, when asked about his foray into boxing, Rourke would state “I just wanted to give it a shot, test myself that way physically, while I still had time.”
Having recruited Freddie Roach, at that point in time a particularly sharp upstart trainer who had been mentored by the great Eddie Futch and former professional fighter of some note, Mickey Rourke embarked on an unlikely professional ring journey as “El Marielito”. Having spent the better part of a year conditioning for the rigors of combat, Rourke tapped into the passion that originally drove him to become a fighter in the first place as a youth and ultimately served to see him make it to the top of his profession as an actor. He made his professional ring debut on May 23 1991 at age 38 against one Steve Powell, an undistinguished 0-4 cruiserweight. Those within the sport doubted his chances given his old-for-boxing years and previous lifestyle as an actor. And there was the talent factor. Despite the fine condition he had worked himself into at 178lbs, and the rumors of his surprising level of fistic prowess demonstrated in the gym sparring, many wondered if he in fact had the ability to succeed at the club level let alone against seasoned talent.
Under the hot lights of Florida’s Fort Lauderdale Memorial Auditorium, Rourke cautiously boxed his way to a close unanimous four-round decision victory. Clips Of the event were shown across the country on various mainstream news outlets. People Magazine featured Rourke’s doubtful foray, citing his intense personality, penchant for after-hours destructive behavior and sagging movie career as the driving factors behind a doomed cause. Many within the sport openly questioned Rourke’s reasoning with one popular boxing publication going so far as to suggest that it was an ego trip dependant on carefully chosen no-hopers as opposition. But if that first ring assignment wasn’t enough to convince the masses he was serious about his campaign, his second foray between the ropes underlined his stance, even if along with it fuel was added to the fire of those that spewed dissent.
Eleven months after his first professional fight Rourke sputtered to a majority four-round draw against the 0-2 Francisco Harris at the Miami Beach Convention Center. His critics loudly took hollow solace in the non-victory, but in fact, Rourke had found a way to survive within the confines of sport’s most lonely refuge; the prize ring. It didn’t matter if the media viewed the outcome as further proof of one man’s decline or that within the sport itself fans gave him zero chance to amount to anything, the spirit of Johnny Walker was alive, and the man that had originally brought that character to life for all to see on the silver screen was at the very core a survivor himself, in both the ring and in life.
Two months later “El Marielito” returned, this time at a pared down 168lbs, travelling across the globe to Tokyo Japan, scoring a highlight reel-worthy 1st-round knockout over Darrell Miller, an 11-37-4 journeyman who had gone rounds within seasoned fighters such as Buck Smith and Harold Brazier. I remember getting a copy of the Miller fight sent to me in the weeks after the win. Rourke displayed the moves of a true ring professional. His pace was reasonably measured, his offerings calculated and his timing suggestive of a man that had spent the long weeks and months under the watchful eye of somebody that had seen something in him and believed in him, somewhere in the dark recesses of a dank and dingy gym devoid of fanfare and spotlight. To me it no longer mattered what was written about this guy. He was writing his own story and I no longer viewed him as an actor. I viewed him as a fighter, from then on following his career intently.
Six months after scoring his first knockout victory “El Marielito” returned, scoring a four-round decision over 17-27-2 journeyman Terry Jesmer in Oviedo, Principado de Austurias, Spain. Three months after that, he scored another 1st-round stoppage at the Kemper Arena, Kansas City, Missouri over one Tom Bentley. He rounded-out 1993 with TKO victories over Bubba Stotts in Joplin, Missouri and later over Thomas McCoy at Sporthalle, in Hamburg Germany.
On September 8th 1994, “El Marielito” made his last ring appearance at the Davie Arena, Davie, Florida. Just days before his 42nd birthday, he struggled to a four-round majority draw against Sean Gibbons, a 28 year-old 11-3-2 journeyman. Although this final contest wasn’t a win, it was far from being a loss and can be viewed as a victory of sorts. Everybody that had predicted misfortune for the gifted performer was proven wrong. If anything they all misunderstood who Mickey Rourke really was as an individual and that at the heart of the matter, fighting was his first, greatest love.
After his retirement from prizefighting, Rourke returned to acting, accepting supporting roles in films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of John Grisham’s The Rainmaker, Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66, Sean Penn’s The Pledge and Sylvester Stallone’s remake of Get Carter. Rourke also wrote several screenplays under the name Sir Eddie Cook, including Bullet, later in which co-starred with Tupac Shakur. In 2001 he appeared as the villain in Enrique Iglesias music video Hero, two years later resurfacing in a smaller supporting role in Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
In 2005 Rourke made his comeback in mainstream Hollywood circles with a lead role in Robert Rodriguez’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City. For his work he received awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Online Film Critics Society, as well as “Man of the Year” from Total Film magazine.
In 2008, Rourke played the lead in the critically acclaimed masterpiece The Wrestler, winner of the Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. Some twenty years after garnering critical acclaim for his work in film, he had managed an unlikely return to prominence. Recognition for his screen brilliance and talent had eclipsed the years of negative media coverage and the stigma of being a volatile self-destructive personality. Long gone was the sex symbol status and good looks of his heyday, the result of injuries incurred during the period he campaigned as a professional boxer and poor plastic surgery procedures thereafter. Rourke managed to make it back to the mountaintop with carefully chosen roles that he could tap his heart and soul into. If you’ve seen him at his best back in the day, his portrayal of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a faded aging professional ring wrestler ranks right up there beside his very best work.
The story of Mickey Rourke is in some ways a complicated one. The extraordinary drive to succeed undeniably has its roots in his youth. That drive took him into the most difficult and painful of all sports, a pursuit that ultimately serves up a sobering dose of unabashed truth. That intensity with which his pursued boxing brought him injury, which subsequently took him down a different road, one known also for dispensing painful truth and heartache, a path few have managed to traverse successfully. The fire within his spirit that pushed him as an amateur fighter and drove him to great heights as an actor began to consume him as an individual. Realizing that he had unfinished personal work and the self destruction which was an inevitable fate, he reached back to that competitive component within himself and resumed what he had originally intended to do, fight.
Criticized, laughed at and disparaged by the masses, Mickey Rourke pursued the hardest and most dangerous profession, undaunted by those around him. Along the way he revealed to all of us who he really was while at the same time quenching that inner fire. He amassed results he could be proud of at a point in life where many look back and lament opportunity that went unrequited. Mickey Rourke found and tested himself before his personal window of opportunity closed. It reinforced something special inside of him, galvanizing his resolve and enabling him to make a storied and unlikely return to prominence on the silver screen. He is undoubtedly to film one of the greats, of this or any generation. As a man he demonstrated unusual focus and self belief, ultimately ridding himself of the inner demons that once threatened to consume him. Years from now when Father Time tolls his ten count over this rare individual, let his tombstone read something like this: Mickey “El Marielito” Rourke; artist, movie star, professional prizefighter and comeback king.
Watch an Amazing Acceptance Speech by Mickey Rourke for his Spirit Award.