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Just thought I'd send further information and more detail on Mickey Rourke's television appearance on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross here in England.

 

- Said he's very proud of 'The Wrestler' and it's the hardest movie he's ever had to make and the best movie he's ever made. "What I'm most proud about is... I didn't know sh** about wrestling, but the wrestling community, the WWE, Vince McMahon, 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper, the legendary 'Nature Boy' Ric Flair.. they all came to the premier and they've embraced the movie and that really means a lot to me."

 

- He admitted that before he did 'The Wrestler' he saw pro wrestling in the same light as a lot of people. "I myself had no respect for the wrestling business at all coming from a boxing background. I thought "This is sh**t, it's pre-determined with choreographed outcomes" and was disappointed that this great director that I wanted to work with wanted to make a movie like this."

 

- Said he had 7 months in which to put on 28 pounds for the role. He went on to say he ate between 6 and 7 times a day with two split work-out routines; lifting heavy weights and 45 minutes of cardio. "It was really hard having to put on not just fat but muscle in 7 months time."

 

- There was an interesting moment when the host brought up steroids when talking about Mickey getting into shape and asked; "I mean steroids weren't used I'm sure but were drugs used.. did you need supplements as well to help deal with this change?" Mickey just gave an odd look to which the audience started laughing at. He and the host then started smiling which prompted Jonathan to say "In a way, no answer is worse than an answer". Rourke laughed and said "A lot of protein shakes and a lot of push-ups".

 

- Rourke then got into experiencing the wear and tear wrestling has on the body: "After about a month and a half I went 'Man, these guys ARE athletes!' and I do have a renewed respect for the sport 'cause I ended up with three MRI's in two months because you get some big cat picking you up and throwing you down, and these guys take years learning how to 'flop' they call it, to break the impact.. and I'm landing like a lump of shit and every bone is rattling and I'm struggling to walk and I'm getting people to push me up stairs 'cause my legs couldn't carry the weight." He then went on: "So when you see these guys that are in their late 30's/early 40's that are still doing it everyday... they can barely tie their shoes where they're so beat up... but they feed off the adrenalin of the audience when you got 60,000 people in the arena going crazy and they do a flip off the top rope maybe 40% of the time they're not going to land right and something's going to really pop or break... people are going home hurt every evening."

 

- Said he was going to attend his first proper wrestling event in the form of Wrestlemania in Houston, Texas. When asked if he was going to wrestle, he replied: "Errr.. we had talked about that but now that I'm listening to other people rather than just myself... I'm not going to be allowed to wrestle.. I'm going to take their advice. He then went on to say: "But I was halfway there.. I like the physical thing, you know?"

 

Overall it was a very interesting interview and as ever, Rourke came across as very pleasant and funny, even conducting some of the interview in a Lucha Libre mask the host gave him.

 

Here is the link to the show: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hq4mj

 

Rourke comes on at the 34 minute mark.