Across a career in the entertainment industry that has seen him fall in and out with a lot of famous individuals, Mickey Rourke has no plans of making up with Robert De Niro, as he explained to Off The Ball in conversation with Andy Lee.
Robert De Niro's name had yet to be broached when Mickey Rourke offered it up as a talking point in conversation with Andy Lee for Off The Ball.
"He's a bitch and a cry-baby," remarked Rourke of De Niro, 33 years after the pair worked together in the film Angel Heart. "He wanted me to bend down and kiss his ass but he'd got the wrong guy."
In a wide-ranging discussion that covered Rourke's on-screen career, his checkered past, and a life-long passion for boxing, the methods he has employed as an actor have tended to encompass every facet of his life experience.
For this reason, he believes that De Niro was never likely to take kindly to him.
"I would read the script a couple times," he explained of his method for making movies, "and make all my choices so I would have plans in place. I always took the acting very personally and that extended to whoever I was working with.
"My mentality is very much, 'this is me against you and I'm going to take you to school.' That's why when De Niro and I worked together, it didn't go very good.
"He would keep crying about what I was doing to the Director and this one time there was a moment where he bitched a little too much.
"I didn't lose my temper or anything but I just looked at him, right in the eyes. I looked right through him and I was thinking to myself, 'Listen, you ain't been where I've been, you haven't walked in my shoes and there is no fucking way you're going to win this battle with me.'
"He'd have had to kill me, wake me up and kill me again. So, you know, when I do acting I make it personal."
Needless to say, despite Rourke's stated passion for boxing and De Niro's performance as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, Rourke didn't give much thought toward talking about the sport with the Academy Award-winning actor.
"Raging Bull," he offered. "Raging my asshole."
Despite the time that has passed since their appearance on screen together in the late 1980s, Rourke has believed himself to have cause for more recent consternation with the star of Taxi Driver and Goodfellas.
Although De Niro's representatives categorically rejected the claim, Rourke has suggested that Martin Scorsese had been considering him for a role in The Irishman before De Niro ruled out the idea of working with Rourke again.
"Hey Robert De Niro," wrote Rourke in an Instagram post last week. "That’s right, I am talking to you, you big fucking crybaby. A friend of mine just recently told me that a few months back you’re quoted as saying to newspapers, ‘Mickey Rourke’s a liar he talks all kind of shit.'
"Listen Mr.Tough Guy in the movies, you’re the 1st person that ever called me a liar and it was in a newspaper. Let me tell you something, you punk ass, when I see you I swear to God on my Grandmother, on my brother and all my dogs, i gonna embarrass you severely 100%."
You can watch Mickey Rourke's in-depth interview with former middleweight world champion boxer Andy Lee in its entirety here.
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