Micky Rourke

At the height of his fame during the 1980s and early 1990s, Mickey Rourke was one of Hollywood’s most exciting, charismatic and talented screen idols. His starring role alongside Kim Basinger in the controversial boxoffice hit 91/2Weeks established Rourke as arguably the foremost male sex-symbol of his generation and his performance in Alan Parker’s atmospheric Angel Heart confirmed his reputation as an actor of significant ability and range. However, with his future seemingly assured, Rourke’s hard drinking lifestyle, intense self-loathing and well publicised marital difficulties caused him to be labelled as an uncontrollable maverick and saw him reduced to appearing in a number of soft-core straight-to-video potboilers. After turning his back on the movie industry to pursue a brief but intense career as a professional boxer, Rourke returned to acting and began a decade-long struggle to regain his place among the Hollywood elite, which would culminate with his triumphant portrayal of Marv, a lovelorn sociopath, in the big-budget adaptation of Frank Miller’s acclaimed Sin City graphic novels. Featuring extensive interviews with Rourke himself, director Francis Ford Coppola and many others, Mickey Rourke: High and Low systematically exposes the many layers of this most unique actor’s complex personality.