Mickey Rourke is more of a gentle soul than he appears. The burly actor has adopted a stray dog that he found on the streets of Romania while filming his new thriller, Dead in Tombstone. He named the pooch Foxy.
Rourke’s benevolent behavior shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to those paying attention during his Oscar campaign in 2009. After receiving the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in The Wrestler, he acknowledged, “All my dogs” in his acceptance speech. “The ones that are here, that aren’t here anymore, because sometimes when a man’s alone, that’s all you got is your dog. And they meant the world to me,” Rourke said.
Rourke would often walk the red carpets or show up at events with his beloved Chihuahua Loki, who passed away in late 2009 at the age of 18. The actor credited Loki with helping him battle years of depression.
“I didn’t want to be here, but I didn’t want to kill myself. I just wanted to push a button and disappear,” Rourke told Barbara Walters in 2009.
“I think I hadn’t left the house for four or five months, and I was sitting in the closet, sleeping in the closet for some reason, and I was in a bad place. And I just remember I was thinking, ‘Oh, man, if I do this,'” Rourke said. “And then I looked at my dog and he made a sound, like a little almost human sound. I don’t have kids, the dogs became everything to me. The dog was looking at me going, ‘Who’s going to take care of me?'”
Rourke had a promising film career in the 1980s, but left the biz to take up boxing in 1991. He scored a comeback in 2008 with the movie The Wresler, which netted him a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance for an Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama), and an Oscar nomination for Best Actor (he lost to Sean Penn for Milk).
Other movie-star dog news:
Jessica Chastain spotted with her three-legged pup.
How much do movie dogs make?
