Actor Mickey Rourke has disclosed his drug-ridden childhood and the dark side of his life in a new book.
Rourke, who has penned his experiences in a new paperback edition of PETA president Ingrid E Newkirk's book One Can Make a Difference: How Simple Actions Can Change the World, says his stepfather used to assault him.
Fox News quoted him as writing: "My stepfather used to crack my head just because he felt like it. He was big, very big, and mean. And he was physically abusive to my mother. I hated him for hurting her, for making her afraid. For years, I wanted nothing more than to take him down.
"In our neighbourhood, there was some community services centre set up to give kids a place to go and to keep us out of trouble. That's where I first found a speed [punching] bag. To me, it represented a ticket to manhood."
The 57-year-old Rourke, who has also trained as a boxer, writes: "I couldn't beat my stepfather, so I guess I started taking it out on everyone else over time. When I was an adult, I would fight everywhere, anywhere, for anything. Look at me sideways and you're gone.
"I didn't care about the consequences. I was drinking and taking drugs. But more than that, I was angry and crazy and ashamed of how I'd been treated. I'd been kicked around a lot, so I figured the way to fix this was to lash out."
Rourke says matters got "so out of control" that no one wanted to make a film with him and he threw away everything — his acting career and his marriage with model and small-time actress Carre Otis, with whom he starred in the sexually explicit 1989 film Wild Orchid.
He says: "I don't like to talk about it because I still love her, but when my wife walked out, she said, 'You need help!' and I thought, '*** you!' She was right; I needed to change, but I didn't want to change.
"But one day I looked in the mirror and I saw myself the way others saw me; I saw the armour and I scared the *** out of myself... Instead of going to a therapist and telling him everything, and I mean everything, it would have been easier just to go to a priest, leave some *** out, then have him tell me to say some Hail Marys and Our Fathers and that's that!
"In fact, I actually did see a priest for a while, a great one who stopped me from blowing my brains out. We'd go in the basement, he'd pour me a glass of wine, we'd smoke cigarettes, and then we'd pray. But I needed a shrink too, so I forced myself to go. I had to learn not to let people push my buttons, find out what was triggering all this rage, and stop throwing things away. I've barely missed a therapy session in over a decade, and that takes will power."
Rourke admits his six beloved dogs became his "little family" and gave new meaning to his life. He writes: "I had to look after them and watch out for them, which meant I couldn't do the things that were not good for me to do...
"I was sitting in a strip club in London a year or more back. Some drunk guy came up to me and started to pick a fight over something he'd read in the paper about "those *** little dogs you got!" I asked him to be nice. He got in my face. I stood up, but I didn't do anything. The bouncers came over and put him outside.
"In earlier years, I would have done him in. It's not easy not to react, but I work on it all the time. I'm a work in progress; every day I have to remind myself to keep on that road."
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