Each week The Underrated looks at the most unjustly unappreciated things in existence. This week ... The Most Underrated Leading Man: Mickey Rourke (Part Two: The Pugilist)

As I had predicted last week, Mickey Rourke the actor is not quite as underrated as he used to be.

Since I wrote part one of this column he has won a Golden Globe for best actor, appeared on every talk show in America and been nominated for an Oscar. For years, though, he’s insisted a championship belt would mean more to him than an Academy Award. Which brings us to Mickey the fighter.

According to Mickey Rourke, he only got into acting because he was injured in the boxing ring and needed something to do. Whether it was his bodybuilder father, the hood he grew up in or something deep inside of him, acting seemed a shameful pursuit next to that of fighting. And the more he succeeded at it, the more that feeling seemed to grow.

But surely that’s only part of the explanation. Separate from his blue-collar contempt for the theatrical is a decidedly complex streak of self-destruction. He had the charisma, charm, quirky eloquence and unearthly good looks of the perfect leading man. And so he set to bashing them to bits.

I read an interview a long time ago in which Rourke confessed that his predominant addiction is to violence. I would guess, more specifically, it is to being beaten up. That may partly explain why in 1991 – well past his prime – he stepped back into the ring with a Hells Angel trainer in his corner. He would be pummelled for years, beyond recognition.

I doubt it was a coincidence that, while turning down the choicest parts in Hollywood, two of the movies Rourke chose to do in the ’80s, Angel Heart and Johnny Handsome, centre around a man so disfigured he gets reconstructive surgery and changes his identity – oh, and also sells his soul, both figuratively and literally. 

If back then I’d have been able to glimpse 20 years into the future, I’d have been surprised about a lot of things but perhaps most shocked that, of all people, Axl Rose and Mickey Rourke would end up looking like the same guy. (In an interesting coincidence, Rourke, this week, became the first actor to win a Golden Globe and thank Axl Rose; you could practically hear Meryl Streep retching.)

Perhaps Rourke saw his face much the way he saw acting: as unmanly and unrepresentative of his true, tough, fucked-up self. Anyone with those looks and a bit of skill could make it a fair distance in the movie game – the real test of mettle was doing it without the looks. So perhaps he didn’t cover up quite as much as a good boxer should, and his face took the brunt of his messed-up tough-guy theories.

So finally the circle is complete: due to injuries in the ring, Mickey Rourke started acting again – this time without his pretty-boy looks. He picked up parts he never could have played before. Witness his turn as a toothless, transvestite convict in Animal Factory, and of course, as Randy “The Ram” Robinson in the Wrestler, for which Mickey deserves not only an Oscar, but a championship belt.

Read Part 1 - Mickey: The Actor

Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall has written for every major publication in Canada – most of which don’t exist anymore. His most recent book Down to This was nominated for several awards, none of which it won. He lives and drinks in Toronto.