Mickey Rourke has rejected a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $100,000 to prevent his eviction from his West Hollywood home.
The star of The Wrestler and 9 1/2 Weeks took to Instagram to deny any knowledge of the campaign, which was set up by his manager, Kimberly Hines, and her assistant.
“Something’s come up that I’m really frustrated, confused and I don’t understand,” Rourke, 73, said on Instagram Monday to his 489,000 followers. “Somebody set up some kind of foundation or fund for me to donate money, like in a charity. And that’s not me.
“If I needed money, I wouldn’t ask for no f—ing charity,” the Oscar nominee continued, cradling his dog Lucky in his arms. “I’d rather stick a gun up my a– and pull the trigger. So whoever did this, I don’t know if they did it, why they did it — I don’t understand it. I wouldn’t know what a GoFund foundation is in a million years. … My life is very simple. I don’t go to outside sources like that. And, yeah, it is embarrassing, but, you know, I’m sure I’ll get over it like anything else.”
He also called the situation “humiliating,” and asked people not to give money — and to ask for it back if they’ve already given. He said his eviction stemmed from a landlord-tenant dispute, and that he stopped paying rent because of problems with the property where he had lived for several years.
“I’m not paying rent because there’s mice, there’s rats, the floor is rotten. One bathtub, there’s no water. … In two different sinks, there was no water.”
He vowed to press on.
“Like all storms, this thing will pass, and I’ll go to work, and things will get back to whatever normal is,” he said.
Mickey Rourke’s Manager Explains GoFundMe
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Rourke’s manager, Kimberly Hines, said she and an assistant set up the campaign “with Mickey’s full permission,” but pledged to return the money if Rourke doesn’t want it.
Hines said she was helping Rourke financially and that he had been set up in a hotel with his three dogs while he waits to move new apartment in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood.
She also said Rourke had never managed money well and was very generous with what he had.
“He doesn’t really know the word moderation,” she said. “So he either has a lot or has nothing. He lives check to check. And he’s also been very generous with people. He bought his ex-girlfriend, who had cancer, an apartment. Didn’t buy himself an apartment. He’s given a lot of his money away to people, to friends. He’s loaned people money. Doesn’t have that upbringing or that education to manage money. So a lot of it was spent. A lot of it really was given away. He has very happy ex-girlfriends. He’s been very generous with people, and he just didn’t manage his money well.”
But she also said Rourke has been offered several roles since news broke Sunday of the GoFundMe.
“The good thing about this is that he got four movie offers since yesterday. People are emailing him movie offers now, which is great because nobody’s been calling him for a long time,” she told THR.
Mickey Rourke Explains Eviction Story
In his Instagram post, Mickey Rourke added that he had made mistakes in the past, but was in a better place, and said his work in recent years reflects that.
“I’ve done a really terrible job in managing my career. I wasn’t very diplomatic, you know, I had to go to over 20 years of therapy to get over the damage that was done to me years ago, and I worked very hard to work through that. And I’m not that person anymore. But, you know, I can’t be the one to say that. You’ve got to talk to the last several people I’ve worked with. Talk to Robert Rodriguez. Talk to Francis Coppola, Darren Aronofsky.”
Rourke worked with Rodriguez on 2005’s Sin City and 2014 Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and received some of the best reviews of his career for Aronofsky’s 2008 The Wrestler, which earned him his Oscar nomination for Best Actor. He worked with Coppola on 1983’s Rumble Fish.
Main image: Mickey Rourke on Instagram.
