 “The boxing, I guess, was just another form of punishment in a way. But it was something I did before I acted. I was only going to have one fight. I didn’t know it was going to go on for five-and-a-half years, like 13 fights. And then all of a sudden that was my life, and the acting was gone. Then when I retired from boxing, I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to go back to acting now.’ But then when I went, ‘Hey, I’m back to acting now,’ everyone went, ‘Fuck you, you’re finished.’”
“Sorry I’m late. I went out.”
Still partying hard after all these years?
“I’m not dead yet.”
You have said that you felt very close to Marv, in Sin City, and Rodriguez has said that you were as near as they could get to the character without hurting themselves. Why did you identify with him so much?
“I read that on the internet. I’m going to ask him what he meant by that.”
How close did you feel to him and why?
“Well I think the pieces of me that were – are? – damaged, messed up, you know, you could feel very much that way inside. So I guess I would try to hide it most of my life. When I was combing my hair in the morning, I’d be going, ‘You’re such a prick.’ I had some weird shit happen when I was little, stuff I couldn’t fix right away, and it caused everything to go haywire. That was very weird, because when you’re little and you can’t defend yourself, you feel like a sense of shame, so you build up an armour. Sometimes the armour that I built up got too much and what I thought was a strength became really a weakness. Then I fucked everything up because of that. I didn’t have the knowledge to know what to do about it.”
And you became self destructive as a result?
“Well yeah. But it was something I thought was armour. Something I needed for protection. But it got way out of hand.”
How did you eventually deal with it?
“I went to go see a doctor and talked to him for 10 years -- a lot.”
Was this self-destructiveness why you stopped acting at one point?
“Sure. The boxing, I guess, was just another form of punishment in a way. But it was something I did before I acted. I was only going to have one fight. I didn’t know it was going to go on for five-and-a-half years, like 13 fights. And then all of a sudden that was my life, and the acting was gone. Then when I retired from boxing, I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to go back to acting now.’ Then when I went, ‘Hey, I’m back to acting now,’ they went ‘Fuck you, you’re finished.’”
You’re definitely coming back now.
“Yeah, but I planned on coming back seven or eight years ago. But they wouldn’t have me.”
Some reporters said that you were good at the boxing but you were taking too many punches, and they wondered if you did that because you thought you deserved it.
“You know, when I fought in the gym, I never would wear the headgear. No. It was like just another crazy thing. But then I stopped exactly when I should have stopped. The doctors said I couldn’t have no more fights and kept saying, ‘Please, one more.’ But every fighter you ever met wants one more fight, you know?”
Because of what happened to you as a child, when you became famous, was there a part of you that felt like you didn’t deserve it?
“Of course, yeah. Sure. And I think out of the shame evolves anger, because you don’t want to feel shameful all the time. That’s not cool. It’s better to be angry.”
Have you any regrets today?
“I’ve got millions of regrets, yeah. I wish I had the knowledge and the sophistication and the intelligence to fix what was broken many years ago, but I didn’t. So that’s where it all fell apart. But I had no way till everything was gone and my wife [Carre Otis] said to me, before she left, too [smiles], ‘You need help.’ I said ‘What do I do?’ and she told me about this doctor.”
You needed to get to the point where you’d lost everything?
“Well you know, I said to the doctor one time, we’re sitting in his office – by the way, for a couple of years I had no money to pay him, because he’s like $400 an hour, but he’s really good. So I said, ‘Was I crazy?’ I said this about a year and a half ago [around 2003], and he went like this [nods silently]. I didn’t think he was going to do that. I thought he was going to go, ‘No, no’ but he did that, and I said ‘OK.’ And then he said, ‘But not anymore.’ For two years, I ended up owing him $30,000, and he said he never did that with a patient before but I was working real hard, going three days a week to see him, for about four years, then two days a week and now once a week. But in the beginning, because of where I come from, the men don’t go to fucking therapy, you know? It’s like something for fags. I had shame about going to the therapist. In the beginning I would go, then miss maybe three or four appointments. He said, ‘Look, you can’t come when it’s the explosion, you got to come before the explosions all the time.’ I’ve only missed maybe seven appointments in nine years, which is pretty good. I was living like in a little fucking room, with no car, one jacket, three pairs of pants, brokered to shit, and one day I said to him, ‘Hey,’ and I mentioned four or five actors that I admire or whatever, that I know, ‘those guys would fucking kill themselves if they had to live the way I’m living, like a fucking animal now, because I fell really far. What about them?’ He said to me, ‘Only you could fall this far. They wouldn’t have any idea how to fall that far,’ and I went ‘OK.’ I understand now what he meant in the big picture. He’s saved my life in a big way.”
Have you reached a point now where you can live a normal life?
“Yeah but I have to be consistent. It’s like when my wife left me. I said, ‘Please don’t leave me’ [makes a pleading noise] and she said ‘You’re not consistent. You’ll kill me.’ I went back about two days later and I looked up the word consistent. I had no idea what it meant. I don’t like it. Consistent? There’s no fun. It was not me, consistent.”
Have you and your ex wife made peace?
“Oh yeah, we talk every day.”
When did you know that you had to take responsibility?
“I used to have a very big house, with an entourage from hell, cars and motorcycles, money, and pussy. You know, the whole nine yards. Then one day it was gone and I’m in a little room. I was all like fuck it, and I would just lift weights all the time. Then one day I walked by the mirror and I saw Marv. Old Marv, you know? And I went, ‘Fuck, no wonder people feel the way they do about me. I got to try and start getting back or changing something,’ because it was very dark, no light at all, just black. But I don’t mean for like five minutes, I’m talking five, six, seven years. Then all of a sudden there was a little daylight and the window started to open a little. But it didn’t fucking happen in six months. I thought it was going to happen in six months. Maybe in six years it started to happen and I could get out of the fucking window.”
Did anyone in the business help you?
“Yeah but they wouldn’t hire me.”
Now are you going from one film to another?
”Oh that’s all I want to do. I enjoy acting again. When I went back to boxing, after Angel Heart, I fucking hated acting, hated actors, all of it.”
Because of what?
“Because of when I studied really hard in New York as a student, with Strasberg at the Studio, it was all about the perfection, doing the work the right way. It was very specific. You were either good or you sucked. There was no grey. Then I saw [makes a dismissive noise] what they call fucking movie stars now, or actors, and that made me rage. There was too much grey. And I thought, ‘What is this?’ You know when you have to fill out a form and they say your name, your business, your passport number, your occupation – oh, I could never write that word [actor].”
Did they want to turn you into a regular movie star?
“Yeah, at one point. And then they didn’t want to turn me into anything.”
Was 91/2 Weeks the problem?
“Yeah but that was like the sex symbol thing. What the fuck is a sex symbol? I don’t know who invented that but it’s nothing I wanted to be associated with. Now that I’m older it’s fine. Marv’s a sex symbol!”
Did the suffering you went through help?
”Yeah but it wasn’t like some cool thing I planned to do, to suffer. It just happened. I’d prefer not to suffer and be a more mediocre actor. Really, I’m serious. Fuck the suffering. That ain’t cool at all.”
Do you sometimes wish you’d been successful as an athlete or as a boxer rather than as an actor?
“Probably. . . probably. . . yeah. To be honest with you yeah, because the boxing thing is in my heart. It’s something I truly love. Where the acting thing, I love it but I’ve always liked sports better. When I played other sports, football or baseball, I was at home. Many years before the acting, I was always playing the sports, nothing else. I loved that. I love the men that play that, you know? When I go out here [Cannes] at night or wherever and I meet ex fighters or rugby players, that’s who I feel at home with. ‘Hi, I’m an actor from England. . .’ Yeah? Fuck you! Let me talk to the rugby player.”
It’s said that one of the reasons why Richard Burton drank is because he didn’t think acting was a manly enough pursuit. Is that how you feel? Is that part of the reason why you went back to boxing?
“Um, I don’t know if manly is the word. I actually said that one time and I regret saying that. Because I think the problem is inside yourself, not putting a name on it, you know?”
You talked about not having money after having a lot of it as a big star. So what was the first thing you did when you had money again?
“I don’t have it yet. Money has never been my god. I have turned down movies that were big commercial action movies for a lot of money because that’s not what I want to do. I didn’t have money to eat, okay. But I had one friend who every Saturday would give me money to eat at McDonald’s. No fancy restaurants anymore, no fashion models, just McDonald’s. But that’s where I came from.”
Why did you go back to Miami?
“I went back to Miami because that’s where all the darkness happened.”
Shouldn’t you then stay away from there?
“Yeah but my grandmother’s there, what’s left of my family is there, so I sometimes go there.”
Is your brother there?
[Rourke falls silent and looks hard at me from behind his sunglasses] ”He died . . . four months ago. Joe, yeah.”
When it becomes very dark in one’s life, people sometimes turn to religion. Was there no god for you?
”Oh yeah, there always was that. But he works in a funny way. He don’t work when you call him. ‘Hey, fucking help me now!’ It don’t work like that.”
You obviously get along well with Robert Rodriguez. Are you going to do something else with him?
”I hope so. It’s up to his wife. She’s the boss really, and I seem to have a penchant for pissing her off. I think if it’s up to him, yes.”
Was Barfly a good experience for you?
“I didn’t want to do Barfly because all the men in my family for generations, three generations, have died in their 30s and 40s. My uncle, my great grandfather, my grandfather, my father, all died in their 30s and 40s from drinking, so I’ve had an aversion to that. I didn’t really want to glorify some fucking drunk. But the director was very persistent. I was in London and he was there for fucking two months. I’d walk down the street and he’d go, ‘Mickey!‘ and I’d think, ‘There’s that asshole again.’ So I finally did the movie. I liked the material but I didn’t care for Barbet Schroeder. I think he’s an ass.”
You’re the definitive Bukowski on screen.
“I liked him but, you know, he liked my brother Joe [taps the table twice with his knuckles] more than me, because him and Joe would drink in the morning. They’d go, ‘Hey, have a beer,’ at seven in the morning. I’d be taking my vitamins and my shit and I’d go, ‘Look at you guys. . .’ and he goes, ‘Hey, Joe’s a man, not you.’ I’d be like ‘Fuck you guys.’ But he was cool.”
When you were successful you never went on to drugs?
“No because living in Miami my whole life was really hard to keep my brother out of that. I couldn’t do it because I needed him to stay this way, because he got a little involved in that. I had sports, he didn’t have sports. So I would break his ass and all the other boys’ if they gave him shit.”
When you are successful everyone pretends to be your friend. Was there anyone when you weren’t successful anymore from the movie business who stuck by you?
“The guy in the white shirt there, Pinky. That’s why he’s here, because when everybody else, everybody else, was gone, that motherfucker was there.”
Why don’t you need people today? Don’t you believe it if they’re friendly?
“I had to clean house because all the bikers, all that, they’re not around anymore. So now there’s really nobody. Well maybe two people, and the doctor.”
Thank you for your honesty.
“It’s all I got.”
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