The Full Mickey

The same day “John Grisham’s The Rainmaker” opened to excellent reviews, Mickey Rourke’s brother died. The two men hadn’t seen each other in more than 10 years, but the following day, the actor is on the phone at his Venice home office fielding condolences, along with kudos for his brief, flamboyant turn as attorney Bruiser Stone.

Although he’s “only in the movie for a cup of coffee,” Hollywood is rediscovering Mickey Rourke the actor. But Rourke is busy trying to get another brother out of jail in Dade County, Fla., so he can attend the funeral on furlough. “It’s kind of hectic,” he explains calmly. “Larry was 36. A young man but crazy. We called him Crazy Larry. I always knew he would be the first to go. Always.”

People could have said the same thing about Rourke not too long ago, and did. It cost him his career for a while, or at least the kind of Hollywood A-list career Rourke seemed destined for when he first exploded in the early and mid-’80s with “Body Heat,” “Diner,” “The Year of the Dragon” and “9 1/2 Weeks.”

“I came out of the Actor’s Studio and took acting very seriously,” he says softly. “I wasn’t educated to realize that filmmaking was business and politics as well as an art. I didn’t listen when people told me that things I said and did prevented me from working. There were no business courses at the Actor’s Studio.”

With an entourage of unsavory characters and a vocal disdain for the business side of Hollywood, Rourke was the prototype of the grunge actor, a formidable talent who was also a colossal pain in the pants. “There’s a fine line between being difficult and being a perfectionist,” he says with a drag on a cigarette, “and the fine line is a hit movie.”

By the late ‘80s, Rourke had crossed the line. While his performances still garnered attention, movies like “Angel Heart,” “Barfly” and “Johnny Handsome” failed to ignite with audiences in an era of action blockbusters. “I was disillusioned with acting, with the direction I was going with it and it was going with me,” he says without a hint of the wounded artiste. “Everything was about how much your movies grossed, not about the acting.”

“Burnt out” on the whole scene, Rourke turned to his first love, boxing for four years as a professional light-heavyweight. He stopped reading scripts, turning down roles that won awards for other actors, because he “had to fight in Missouri for $1,200.” He took risks that gave studios and production companies seizures, once even fighting two days before starting a picture. “I don’t blame them, it was wrong of me to do that.”

With bouts in Japan, Argentina, Spain and the United States, Rourke seems to take more pride in his record of nine wins and two draws than he does in his previous acting career. In fact, he credits the ring with the attitude adjustment behind his Hollywood resurgence.

“Boxing brought alive a sixth sense in me that I needed to recapture,” he says, locking eyes as if willing his listener to understand he’s talking life and death here, a real epiphany. “When that bell rings you’ve got to be right there mentally and physically. There’s no asking for a second take. And I tried to honor that profession as well as I could. I tried to honor myself, honor my trainer. The discipline gave me self-respect and self-esteem. I was able to take that same code back to the acting.”

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Before every bout Rourke was scared to death, not of the physical punishment that resulted in a shattered cheekbone and short-term neurological damage among other injuries. He could fight through the pain, sometimes shooting up his hands with Novocain to dull the ache. The sheer terror, the sweats, came from outside the ring. “I’d fight in front of 20-, 30-, 40,000 people and it would be a terrifying experience because most of them came to see me lose.”

He stubs out a cigarette. He never lost in the ring but this is Hollywood and he’s got a big fight in front of him. He’s talked enough trash to know that some people wouldn’t mind seeing him lose.

“[Director] Terry Malick said something to me I keep thinking about,” Rourke says, then waits a beat, using silence as powerfully as words. “We were doing this scene in the jungle and these soldiers are scared to death. My character’s been there forever and he meets this kid who’s falling apart, too. And Terry looked at me and said, ‘Be brave. Be brave. But it’s all closing in.’ ”

The direction helped him nail the scene but he also took it as a parable. It made him think how easy it is to live life the wrong way. “It’s hard to live life the way you’re supposed to with consistency. I know. That’s what I always lacked, consistency, but I never knew what the word meant until recently. Somebody told me I wasn’t consistent and from that day on I swore nobody would be able to say that about me again.”

Among the many remarkable things about Mickey Rourke is that he’s not Mickey Rourke. At least not the grungy wreck of rumor and gossip, careening from street brawl to street brawl, his exploits growing more outrageous with each retelling like a show-biz game of telephone. Whether acknowledging his past mistakes or his rekindled passion to act again, this Rourke has clarity in his eyes and words. His only entourage now consists of nine small dogs, including a brain-damaged pug named Rafael.

“I’m excited about acting again for the first time in several years,” he says. “It’s like doing it again for the first time except while the first time is hard you can get by on ability. The second time is murder because you’re dragging along your reputation and past choices. In a weird way, I always need to have my back up against the ropes.”

Rourke has a compelling response to rumors and questions about his past behavior: “Just talk to the last director I worked with.”

“The Rainmaker” director Francis Ford Coppola is on record saying he’s always found Rourke easy to work with. The actor also recently shot the World War II epic “The Thin Red Line” for Malick, the reclusive director’s first film since “Days of Heaven” in 1978. Malick is notoriously unavailable but reportedly allowed Rourke to improvise his part from 30 pages of notes given to him by the actor.

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Rourke has a sense of humor about the lengths he has to go just to set the record straight. “I hadn’t worked with Francis since ‘Rumble Fish’ in 1983,” he says with a hint of a smile. “He’d heard a lot of stories. I had to fly all the way from Paris to Tennessee just so Francis could see I didn’t have horns.”

The protean director not only cast Rourke but got him to attend his first movie premiere after almost 20 years in the business. Refusing to read his own press, never having seen one of his own movies, the actor was nervous attending the glitzy premiere but he heard Coppola wanted him there and besides, he’s starting over.

“I have to relate it to fighting,” he explains. “I’ve got to stay in training, and premieres and interviews are all part of my road work now.”

Rourke seems genuinely grateful for the compliments he received from the Hollywood big guns at the opening: “I was surprised some of them even said hello to me. Face it, I’ve been out of it.”

But even playing by the rules Rourke can still ruffle the more delicate feathers. At the opening night party he was asked why it had been years since he stepped inside a movie theater, replying, “I don’t know. I think for a long time movies got too cyberland, a little too Steven Spielberg for me.”

Midway through the interview Rourke’s agent calls. Hanging up, his smile is both mischievous and incredulous. “This is what I’m talking about,” he says. “They’re so terrified of what I’m going to say.”

He nods at his publicist sitting in the corner. “I wasn’t dissing Spielberg. His movies are entertainment but they changed movie-making. Blockbusters aren’t about acting but about making money. I became an actor for other reasons.”

Those reasons now include both art and business. In February he plans to go before the camera in New York with his own script, “Penance.” The emotional beats sound familiar. It’s the story of a hit man who’s done 26 hits but can’t go through with No. 27 when his feelings about life change. Rourke just finished the second draft the night before--the night his brother Larry died at a construction site. Rafael crawls up on his lap.

“I’m all about work now,” he says. “I know somebody’s going to have to take a chance and allow me to do that. I don’t expect it to happen overnight. I’ve been very outspoken and paid the price. I’m paying the price now.”

Another silence, but Rourke’s not brooding. In fact, he’s smiling. “If I’m any kind of man at all I can learn from it and keep moving forward. And be brave.”