In HE’s book, Mickey Rourke‘s second greatest performance is in Alan Parker‘s Angel Heart (’87)…the way he howled and cried at the very end as his ’50s shamus, Harry Angel, descended into hell on a rickety elevator.
Rourke’s third greatest performance was as the rop-bop-ah-loo-bop Boogie — a solemn, soft-spoken dude with a great, blonde-streaked bop haircut — in Barry Levinson‘s Diner (’82). This was the performance that inspired Pauline Kael to write that Rourke wasn’t acting for the camera or the critics, but in a truly intimate way…acting in the way that Sinatra sang to his listeners…right to them.
But the absolute finest performance of Rourke’s entire career was a cameo (not even a supporting performance but a four-minute quickie) as Teddy Lewis, an ex-con who gives William Hurt‘s Ned Racine some very serious advice about the riskiness of committing arson.
Born in 1952, Rourke was 28 or 29 when he shot Body Heat, and you just knew right away that this guy was a star waiting to happen, and that he’d eventually make history. He had it all going on.
When I was working for Cannon publicity in ’87 I spoke to Rourke on the phone. It was during the making of Barfly or perhaps during the press tour, and he was at a hotel. I forget what the deal was, but he was late for something or some kind of special activity that Cannon was hoping for hadn’t happened, and I managed to say the wrong thing or put it in the wrong way. He was the only actor I’d flubbed it with, and I was very sorry for having done so, Rourke being one of my heroes at the time.