Word: mickeys
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Slipping a Mickey...
...speak as one who invested early in Rourke futures. Reviewing Barry Levinson's 1982 buddy comedy Diner for TIME, I wrote that "the prize in this gallery is Mickey Rourke, who made a strong impression in Body Heat and assumes command of Diner whenever he is onscreen. With a face as handsome as it is streetwise, and a smile that manages to be both shy and cunning, Rourke has the potential of a young Jack Nicholson...
...Soon he started making good on my bet. Within a few years, Rourke had won starring roles in a bunch of fascinating weirdies: Francis Coppola's Rumble Fish (Mickey was Motorcycle Boy), The Pope of Greenwich Village, Michael Cimino's Year of the Dragon, the S&M erotic drama 9 1/2 Weeks, the satanic thriller Angel Heart (De Niro was the Devil), as a gangster in Elephant Man makeup in Johnny Handsome and a lowlife genius in a film of Charles Bukowski's Barfly. The guy was sexy, dangerous, adventurous in his choice of roles. The actor's clich...
...rare movie where the closing credits for makeup and Mr. Rourke's trainer are well deserved. Mr. Rourke's plastic surgeon may also have earned a mention.) Reviewers love watching actors abuse their bodies for their art almost as much as actors love doing it. That's one reason Mickey should be a guest of honor at the year-end critics' awards dinners. Another is that Rourke's bio blends with the story of The Wrestler, but with a happier ending. His career has come back from the dead; any award would be like a posthumous prize to someone...
...even someone like me, who knows in his bones that The Wrestler is bogus, can cheer the return of Mickey Rourke. And not because it's nice that he seems to have turned his life around and focused again on doing what he once did so well - but because the best writers and directors might have to put Rourke on the short list of actors up for great roles. The man from the past has a future again...