Before his recent career resurgence with The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke was actually an up-and-coming leading man in films like Body Heat and Barfly until about 1991. After that, he returned to boxing but only appeared in a few films and turned down big roles in movies like Rain Man, Platoon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Pulp Fiction. I'm not sure whether his career technically needed saving since he's had a comeback, but how could it have turned out if he'd accepted some of these higher-profile roles? Hopefully, it could butterfly some of Rourke's personal issues from the late 1990s. Maybe he could costar with Robert Downey, Jr. earlier too
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There's still the question of what potential hits he'd want to star in since he seems to have preferred independent pictures. My thought would be actually be Total Recall before Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger get involved; at one point, David Croenenberg was in talks to direct. Would Rourke go for it?
There's still the question of what potential hits he'd want to star in since he seems to have preferred independent pictures. My thought would be actually be Total Recall before Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger get involved; at one point, David Croenenberg was in talks to direct. Would Rourke go for it?