Ah yes, everyone's favourite cantankerous and outspoken agéd actor is at it again. This time Mickey Rourke, the 69-year-old star of The Wrestler and Iron Man 2, went in on Tom Cruise, branding him “irrelevant” in the wake of his $1.2 billion dollar winner Top Gun: Maverick.
The comments were made last night on TalkTV's Piers Morgan Uncensored — ah, what a pairing, like blue cheese and port — which has tanked in viewership since it debuted in late April with a long-winded, controversial interview with Donald Trump.
“When you see someone like Tom Cruise grossing a billion dollars with Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel, thirty-five years or so after the first one,” asked Morgan, “what do you think about that?” And so, Rourke opened his tirade: “That does mean shit to me,” he asserted: “The guy's been doing the same effing part for thirty-five years. I've got no respect for that.”
That part being 'wildly successful leading man in major Hollywood productions,' one should think. Why Rourke would be so emphatically salty about that is anyone's guess. “I don't care about money and power, I care about — when I watch Al Pacino work, and Chris Walken, and De Niro's early work, and Richard Harris' work, and Ray Winstone's work… those are the actors I wanna be like,” he continued.
Finally, the one-time Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson went for something of an attempted knock-out blow, branding Cruise “irrelevant, in my world".
Rourke is famously outspoken on Instagram. Recently, he shared a touching tribute to the recently passed James Caan, dubbing him “a regular guy and very good all-around athlete".
His stormier sensibilities were felt last year, however, when he called Marvel movies “shit" whilst praising the ensemble behind the long-running crime series Law and Order. “Respect to all of you, the work that you all do is real acting, not like that crap that all on Marvel shit,” he wrote, apparently forgetting that he was in the first Iron Man sequel.
Gotta love someone who isn't afraid to say what they think, even if they do come across as a capricious old dog. Cruise, for his part, was living it up at Wimbledon this past weekend, blowing kisses to adoring fans as the biggest victory lap of his career rushes on. Whether or not he has seen Uncensored is yet to be determined.
