LOS ANGELES, California??As soon as I drink water,? Mickey Rourke paused before answering our question?why was he relieved when, at first, his role in Darren Aronofsky?s ?The Wrestler,? which has won him acclaim and a successful-comeback status, was taken away from him and given to Nicolas Cage?

Mickey explained, ?I?m a little nervous today. Oh God. Hands are shaking.? The actor, who said he had been written off as ?finished? after years of bad behavior and decisions, was trying to make sure he didn?t botch this moment. Since his film, ?The Wrestler,? premiered to a Golden Lion Award triumph at the Venice Film Festival, Mickey is up again from the depths.

How low did it take for the man who was regarded in the ?80s as the next Marlon Brando or Robert De Niro to get back on track? Before ?The Wrestler? came up, Rourke was reportedly relying on $200-weekly handouts from a friend.

Roller-coaster ride

So, it was understandable to see Mickey choking up several times, as he talked about the (physically and emotionally) bruising roller-coaster ride of his life and career during this press con.

In ?The Wrestler,? for which Mickey is in contention for the Best Actor-Drama Award in the Golden Globe Awards this Sunday in LA (Monday morning, Manila time), his battered face serves his role well as The Ram, an aging professional wrestler at the twilight of his career.

His answer to our question: ?When I read the script, and when I met Darren, he reminded me of Cimino and Coppola, whom I?ve a lot of respect for. I knew why Darren wanted me to do the role. I knew he would demand everything inside of me, which meant for me, as an actor, to revisit some very dark and painful places.?

The 52-year-old actor added, ?Also, I knew that I?d have to put on 36 pounds of muscle. These wrestlers are really big. So, I hired an ex-Israeli commando soldier who was very strict with me. I needed somebody like him.?

Those challenges made Mickey feel somewhat relieved when the pressure to have a more bankable and reliable star motivated the switch, from him to Nicolas Cage. However, Darren managed to get his original actor back when he scaled down the film?s budget.

The former boxer was asked to absorb the exotic world of pro wrestling: ?Darren made me go to wrestling practice for three months, so I could be with the wrestlers and learn how to wrestle. Wrestling was a sport I didn?t know about.

?In this movie, because wrestling is prechoreographed, I didn?t think I would get any injuries,? Mickey shared. ?I thought it was fake. Man, after the first week, I had my first MRI, because I got some big guy, 260 lbs, pick me up and throw me across the room.?

Both Mickey and Darren (in separate interviews) confessed how surprised they were that their ?small film? made such waves in the festival on the Lido. ?We didn?t expect the reception we got in Venice,? Mickey admitted. ?This movie has a $5.5-million budget. Because of the low budget, Darren decided to shoot fast with a hand-held camera. It was like we didn?t stop working.?

But, Mickey was glad to be working again. He cited the 1990s as the worst period in his career. ?At the same time, I?m only here today because of what happened in the ?90s. I fell so low that I had to get help. I?m still embarrassed to say that I had to see a therapist for many years and work really hard to find out what made me short-circuit.?

Taking a deep breath, Mickey declared in his hoarse voice, ?I?ve loved a few things in my life?my grandmother, brother, dog, ex-wife (Carré Otis, his costar in ?Wild Orchids?), boxing and, recently, acting again. I got to a point where I couldn?t do acting anymore. It wasn?t about me losing respect or the desire to act. There were just too many things in me that were broken that I didn?t know how to fix. So, I blamed it on acting, on this or that.?

Slow process

He admitted, ?I misbehaved terribly the first 15 or so years of my career. I put myself on the bench, and it took many years to understand why I self-destructed. I didn?t even know, until I started to work with somebody who explained what was going on with me. The comeback has been a slow process, not just with work, but with my own change that I had to make. Change was very hard. I still have to work on it.?

Adding to Mickey?s woes are his injuries when he was a boxer. ?I?m deaf in one ear,? he disclosed. ?Because of boxing, I can?t do intricate things with my hands, but I can live with that, because I don?t need to knit (laughter).?

All of Mickey?s psychological and physical challenges in real life somehow find a common thread with his fading character in ?The Wrestler,? making the speech that he delivers as The Ram toward the film?s conclusion resonate with pathos.

?It was Darren who gave me the leeway to put in something,? Mickey explained. ?There wasn?t a speech at the time. But, we thought that a speech was called for. So, what I did was take different parallels of my life?there?s that last time when you?re up there, or that time you?ve messed up so bad, or you?ve gotten older and people want to say you?re over, but you?re still breathing. Or, they put me in a box, as if I?m dead even when I am still breathing...I don?t want to go back to that dark place for the rest of my life, because this is my last chance.?

Of his union with Carré, a marriage rocked by his wild ways, charges of spousal assault against him, which were eventually dropped, and her reported heroin addiction, Mickey said, ?I was married for 13 years. My wife took off?she had to take off. I waited a long time for her to come back. I?m also here today because she never came back. Because people said, ?He?s over, finished, down and out. It?s all over for him!? A producer said to somebody, ?Yes, he was a great actor, but he shot off all his toes.? I?m here today because of people like her who said, ?You?re finished.? The only one who?s going to say when I?m finished is me, just like in the speech that I make at the end of this movie.?

Mickey quipped with a rueful grin, ?I still have some things to chase.?

E-mail rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com, and read his blog, ?The Nepales Report,? on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.