Mickey Rourke's New Movie "The Immortals"

It isn't difficult to see that actor Mickey Rourke has had something of a hard life; it's written all over his face. Remember the strikingly handsome, extremely cocky, captivating young actor from the 1980s, with his performances in films like "Diner," "Rumblefish" and "Nine 1/2 Weeks"? That guy is long gone, replaced by a man with an almost unrecognizable face that has seen the inside of one too many plastic surgeon's offices. A man whose Hollywood career took such a deep downslide that he believed he'd never get work again.

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But somehow, Mickey Rourke has pulled off the impossible, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. Ever since his striking performance in "The Wrestler" in 2008, which garnered him a Best Actor Oscar nomination, he's been regularly getting work in big Hollywood films. Currently, he's starring in the box-office winner "Immortals," playing a vicious, tyrannical king in ancient Greece. But it wasn't easy landing good roles after so many years as an outcast, Rourke recalled during a recent "Immortals" press day at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.

"It took me thirteen years to come back," the actor, 59, said with a grimace. "My reputation was so bad. I mean, it was so bad that it made Marlon Brando look like a fairy prince. It didn't happen overnight. I thought that I could turn it around in a year or two."

But Rourke's exile lasted a lot longer than that, and it's clear the experience shook him. "When you're out of a job for thirteen years, your whole lifestyle changes," he said. "It's a humiliating, shameful experience and I don't know if you ever get over it. Ultimately, I could keep my mouth shut because I don't want to go back. It's a lonely dark place. This is a town that's built on envy."

Rourke, whose reputation for brawling, spousal abuse and general bad behavior on movie sets was a big part of his career implosion, insisted that these days he's a changed man.

"In the old days, if they'd say that the call was at seven I'd show up at eleven," he admitted, "and you can't do that. I've got to be consistent with being what they call a 'professional,' because there are - what do you call it - not complications but repercussions and it's a business and it's political. So, if you cause too many problems, no matter how good you are, you're going to be out of work."

So as Mickey Rourke heads into his sixties, he's incredibly thankful that the powers that be in Hollywood have given him another chane. And he chuckled when thinking about one of the key reasons he's been able to star in films that have helped rebuild his reputation, like Robert Rodriguez's "Once Upon a Time in Mexico," Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," Jon Favreau's "Iron Man 2" and now Tarsem Singh's "Immortals."

"What I'm fortunate with is that many of the people that I alienated and pissed off, they're not even working anymore, the directors and the producers. They're all dead or broke or nobody cares," he laughed. "The new breed of guys that have come along, Rodriguez and Aronofsky and Tarsem, they don't care about what I did twenty years ago!"

Jenny Peters' credits include writing on film, celebrities, restaurants and fashion for publications including "USA Today Weekend," the Los Angeles Daily News," "Buzz" and "Cosmopolitan." She currently pens the "Variety" "VPage" and "Seen and Heard" columns, and is the West Coast Bureau Chief of "Fashion Wire Daily."

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