Actor. Born Philip André Rourke, Jr. In 1950, in Schenectady, New York. Charismatic, rebellious, softly tough leading man of Hollywood films. The son of a country club caretaker, he was seven when his parents divorced and he reluctantly moved with his mother and siblings to Miami, where he grew up in the poor, primarily black section of Liberty City. He showed promise as a baseball player and later as an amateur boxer, but, lacking discipline, quit both and spent much of his youth just "hanging out" and getting into trouble. He was saved from delinquency by the acting bug he caught at a junior college. With $00 he borrowed from a sister he flew to New York, where he studied with acting coach Sandra Seacat, supporting himself as parking lot attendant, massage-parlor night manager, a Good Humor man, a pretzel vendor, and other odd jobs. He was cast in a few off-off-Broadway productions but often quit during rehearsals because of disagreements with directors. He showed similar contempt for the Actors Studio, which he attended briefly. Things changed rapidly for Rourke when he headed to Los Angeles, where he began getting small parts in films in 1979. Before long he attracted notice as the earringed arsonist in Body Heat (1981) and as Boogie, the soft-talking beautician in Diner (1982). Leading roles soon followed in such films as The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), 9-1/2 Weeks (1986), Angel Heart, and Barfly (both 1987), in which Rourke emerged as a rough-edged anti-hero, at times reminiscent of his childhood idol John Garfield. Several of his films have boasted graphic sexual content, notably 9-1/2 Weeks and Wild Orchid. While his appeal at the U.S. box office has been only moderate, Rourke is admired enormously in France. The outspoken Rourke provoked controversy in 1989 when he disclosed that he had donated part of his fee for Francesco to the Irish Republican Army, causing two members of the British Parliament to demand that he be barred from entering England and that his films be banned. In 1991 he won his first professional boxing bout in Florida using the pseudonym Marielito.
