Actor Mickey Rourke blasted fellow actor Tom Cruise during a Monday interview with Piers Morgan, calling the “Top Gun: Maverick” star “irrelevant” and accusing him of “doing the same offing part for 35 years.”
Rourke joined the former “Good Morning Britain” host on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” and opened up about his abusive upbringing and his opinions about others who share his profession.
The “Sin City” actor explained that in order to survive a very difficult time, he had chosen to toughen up — “get hard,” as he put it.
WATCH:
"I chose to get hard. Not by choice, just by survival"
Mickey Rourke opens up about how his abusive upbringing made him "a scary person to deal with."@piersmorgan | @talkTV | #MickeyRourke | #PiersMorganUncensored pic.twitter.com/7sFmwAjGzQ
— Piers Morgan Uncensored (@PiersUncensored) July 11, 2022
“There comes a time … when you’re living in shame. That’s it. There’s nothing worse than that. So you got two choices: You either live in shame, and you will become like a broken soul a broken person, or you get hard and I chose to get hard. Not by choice, just by survival,” he said, but he noted that the choice was not without its drawbacks.
“By me getting hard with everything and everybody alienated me from people … I became, as my therapist told me, a scary person to deal with and I didn’t know how to turn the off switch off.”
The actor credited over two decades of therapy with helping him to understand how the power dynamics of his younger years had influenced the way he behaved throughout his career.
“I made a decision a long time ago, when I was 14, that I gotta be a man and I had to be a man at 14. As the years went by, even with the success and the destruction of my career, it was always important for me — because of where I came from — to be a man first and an actor second,” he said.
The two also discussed acting, at which point Morgan mentioned Cruise and the fact that his recent sequel — “Top Gun: Maverick” — had made over $1 billion despite following 35 years after the first film.
WATCH:
"The guy's been doing the same effing part for 35 years… I got no respect for that."
Mickey Rourke tells Piers Morgan he thinks Tom Cruise is "irrelevant" as an actor.@piersmorgan | @TalkTV | #MickeyRourke | #PiersMorganUncensored pic.twitter.com/joB7OSrcMD
— Piers Morgan Uncensored (@PiersUncensored) July 11, 2022
“That doesn’t mean s*** to me. The guy’s been doing the same effing part for 35 years, you know?” Rourke pushed back. “I got no respect for that. Really, brother. I don’t care about money and power. I care about when I watch Al Pacino working, Chris Walken, De Niro’s early work, Richard Harris’ work, Ray Winstone’s work — that’s the kind of actor I want to be, like Monty Clift, Brando back in the day. A lot of guys that just tried to stretch as actors.”
“I think he’s irrelevant, in my world,” Rourke continued.