News

Mickey Rourke Won't Wrestle Off-Screen

Despite the Best Actor nomination he just received and the Golden Globe he won for his tour de force performance in The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke won't let life imitate art. The 52-year-old actor will not be entering the real-life ring with wrestler Chris Jericho at Wrestlemania 25, which is set to take place in Houston this April. Rourke's spokeswoman, Paula Woods, has revealed via e-mail that her client will not be engaging in a royal rumble because "he is focusing entirely on his acting career." Rumors that Rourke would be donning tights in real life began to fly after the actor himself made a statement on the red carpet before the Screen Actor's Guild Awards in Los Angeles last week. Rourke claimed he was going to throw Jericho around the ring "like a tossed salad."

Rourke's career revival continues to blaze. It has just been announced that he will star in Broken Horses, the Hollywood debut of famed Indian writer/director Vidhu Vinod Chopra. The film, which will be written by Chopra, is scheduled to be shot in New Mexico and New York and will be financed and distributed by Reliance Big Pictures, which helped fund DreamWorks when it exited the Paramount system last year. The plot of Broken Horses has not been revealed, although Chopra said he was blown away by Rourke's performance in The Wrestler and that the actor was his first choice for the role even before he won a Golden Globe.

—The ARTISTdirect Staff
01.30.09