Like the coyotes, rattlesnakes and mountain lions that prowl the turf around his Hollywood Hills home, Mickey Rourke has always been too wild and dangerous to tame. But after a life of violence, scandal and crushing disappointment, this once-great actor's career is back on track with Tony Scott's blazing new action drama Domino. Be warned though: he still bites...

High up in the Hollywood Hills, under the smog-coated skies about Los Angeles, there's a series of signs that make more of an impression on a tourist than even the infamous Hollywood sign. Scattered around the hills are bright yellow signs warning of dangerous wild life, including the likes of mountain lions and rattlesnakes.

FILMINK  had been up in the hills a week previous to meeting Hollywood Hills resident Mickey Rourke, who himself knows a thing or two about living the wild life. his was an existence but took him from the highs of being perhaps the best actor of his generation in the 1980's to ultimately landing in the proverbial gutter. Mixing with Hells Angels, cons and hard-living part-set over the past two decades saw Rourke's reputation ---garnered from performances of pathos and grit in the likes of Angel Heart ( 1987 ), Rumble Fish ( 1983 ) and The Pope Of Greenwich Village ( 1984 )--slowly fade to black. As his disillusionment with Hollywood grew, Rourke burnt every bridge in town, while his personal life suffered a major meltdown from the inferno of his excesses. Ever since there has been talk of the MIckey Rourke Acting Comeback, and this year, with his performance as the brooding and tortured knucklehead Marv in Sin City, we finally got it.

Meeting Rourke in his London's Drochester Hotel, FILMINK begins proceedings with "I-was-in-your-neck-of-the-woods-and-I-saw-these-signs-in-the-hills" small talk. An enthusiastic Rourke happily explains the warnings are in fact for real, and soon spills fourth on the current coyote problem that has gripped his neighbourhood. Seemingly at odds with his set-in-stone hardman persona, Rourke is a keen dog lover. Driving seven further against the grain is the fact that his decidedly un-macho favourite breed is the Chihuahua, a very tidy snack for a coyote. " You've got to be very responsible with dogs, " says a concerned Rourke. " The majority of people where I live have lost their animals. I don't want to lose any, because it's a vicious way for them to go."

With coyotes becoming an increasing suburb problem in Hollywood (a recent report details monthly attacks on residents and their pets ), dusk means it's curfew time: the gates of the rich and famous close, and their pets are quickly ushered indoors. " Everybody's in, because they come out around dusk," Rourke says of the coyotes menace with a click of his fingers. "When your driving home late at night, you'll see four or five of them right in the middle of the road, and they don't fucking move - They're really vicious fuckers too. My house boy, who lives with me, told me he was driving home one night, and there was five of them tearing apart a German Shepard, which is a big dog. I'm glad I didn't see that."

Loki, Rourke's favourite chihuahua and constant traveling companion, is present today as FILMINK meets Rourke to discuss his new film Domino. In Tony Scott's " Sort of " biography of tragic model-turned bounty hunter Domino Harvey, Rourke plays Domino's father figure, tough talking bounty hunter Ed Mosby. The film is driven by a strange story indeed, one that even rivals Rourke's own twisted personal journey. Domino Harvey was the daughter of British actor Lawrence Harvey ( most famous for his chilling role in John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate ), who turned her back on a lucrative modeling career to tote a gun as a bounty hunter. Just before Tony Scott's film ( with a script courtesy of Donnie Darko author Richard Kelly ) was due to hit cinemas, 35 year-old Domino Harvey was found mysteriously dead in the bathtub of her Hollywood home. The coroner later ruled that Harvey had died from an accidental overdose of powerful painkiller.

Scampering in alongside her master, Loki gives FILMINK a quick sniff up and down, while handshake greetings are attended to. As Rourke talks about his redemption, Loki curls up and begins to snore, as if she's heard it all before. Rourke, 49, despite his diminutive dog, still cuts a mean figure. With sausage-like fingers, he takes off his shades and rests them on his head, revealing renowned battle-hardened face.

When Rourke was branded a dangerous animal by an industry that quarantined him with a bunch of useless B-movies, he returned to his first love, boxing. He blames his return to the sport as the reason for his reconstructive facial surgery. In the flesh, the damage is not as apparent as photos suggest. Noticeably though, there's little mouth movement when he talks. Buy his famously taciturn bruiser's words flow surprisingly freely, and twice he actually waves away a hovering PR assistant to extend out chat....

Robert Rodriguez says that you can hear Loki snoring during your narration in Sin City because she was sleeping on your lap when you recorded it...." ( Laughs ) These things happen! Loki travels with me everywhere. That was a tough one, because Loki had to fly to Paris on a different plane, and was then driven from Paris to London, because of the quarantine laws. As much as she needs me, I need her. She's like the closest thing to me you know? "

How did she get on with Domino Harvey's pit bull, Ziggy? " Yeah, that was funny. Domino had a shaved head and a black motorcycle jacket on, and this great big pit bull with her. I thought ' this is an interesting looking bird ' I was nervous about the pit bull. I was juggling Loki in my hands, and Domino was staring at me. Then she greeted me by leaning into me with her shoulder. So I said " Fuck you", and she replied " Fuck you." and we got along, you know? We recognized out similarities without discussion."

I heard you hung out a bit? " Yeah, we went for some drinks and hung out. We kind of knew each other."

Whereas you found salvation, did you ever get the impression that she didn't have emotional infrastructure to save herself? " I didn't know, not in the short time I knew her. Where I released it, and it sort of really cut through me, was at her funeral. 3 days before, I just had my appendix out and I was in the hospital. I could hardly fucking stand. But I thought " No, I'm gonna go to the funeral ". She had alot of buddies there, and they made me understand the connection and the part of her hid from the world-the composing of the music, her singing, and the things that she liked to do. They were things I really knew nothing about. From listening to her friends interpretation of her, it hit me alot. It's no wonder we connected the way we did. And I was very sad to hear all this, because she was gone."

Obviously Domino sold her story, but at her funeral, did you get any feeling that people were skeptical about Hollywood telling her story? " Domino had a very special relationship with Tony Scott; he was like a father figure she could trust. It wasn't as if she was doing a movie with some flash, commercial, Hollywood guy who does big formulaic bullshit movies; it's not like she was talking with Spielberg. There was a diverse group of people at the funeral. The friends that she grew up with were really devastated, so she made quite an impact. From what I gathered, she was a hell-raiser from early on, and you pay the price for that."

Sin City has in many ways rubber-stamped your comeback, but I've read that you've resigned yourself to playing the game and it hurts a little to compromise... " Here's the deal. I didn't understand the game for 15 years and I also had no rules with anything in my life. There was no discipline at all. I surrounded myself with a bunch of assholes from where I came from. It was very easy for me when I was raging and confused to point the finger at all the people in the system: the producers and all the cunts I didn't like, and say it was their fault. But really when everything fucked up and I lost everything, it wasn't their fault that my wife left me. It wasn't their fault that my house was gone. It wasn't their fault that my money was gone, and that I lost my credibility, respectability and trust. I had to look in the mirror, and I looked in the mirror and said ' Fuck '."

When did your disillusionment with the film business come? " I was finished with this business right after The Pope Of Greenwich Village, and that was really early on."

But your films around this period were respected as cult films and championed by true fans... " Sure. It was never a problem with the acting - it was always me. It was being out of control."

Was that an ego thing? The films didn't do well box office-wise in the states... " No, it wasn't ego..."

I mean doing Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man must take an ego to do? " It does, but that was because I'd waited 2-3 years for a movie that I wanted to fall on my plate and it didn't. So I did Harley Davidson because it paid me a lot of money, so I could pay off some big fucking house I bought. That was a lesson too. Sure, I got upset about certain movies - The Pope Of Greenwich Village, Angel Heart or Year Of The Dragon - because there was all that other Hollywood crap that was making money that had nothing to do with acting and that short circuited me. I always respected the pure par of acting, the part that I originally grew to enjoy from The Actors Studio, and I wanted it to be about that, but it wasn't.

The funny thing is, in Europe - especially France - you became loved as this brooding, handsome, existential figure.... " Maybe I cultivated it to a certain degree, but maybe it was something that was in me innately, but it got out of control. It got to the place where even those people were looking at me, thinking, ' He's really fucked up '. When the French start thinking ' God, you've got problems ', then your really in trouble! But it was also the French that 1st gave me any recognition in a way that I was proud of, for Rumble Fish, when it was not accepted in America.

Your an older guy now acting with young actors coming up, which is similar in a sense to when you returned to boxing ( in 1991, aged 35 ). You were fighting guys 10 years younger than you.  " Yeah, that was no walk in the park."

Larry Holmes and George Foreman made comebacks at 40. Is it for the love of boxing or just for the payday? " It's the love of boxing, believe it or not. I thought I was going to come back and fight one more year and it turned into 5-and a half years ( Rourkes return to the ring panned out to 8 wins, 2 draws and no defeats ) because I fell in love with it again, and I couldn't turn it off. They had to finally say to me, ' Your going to lose your fucking mind! Your memory's going! Mickey, were going to have to find someone to take you around the fucking corner to show you where your house is!"

You sparred for 18 months with world middle weight champion James Toney; that's like a death wish isn't it? " He beat the piss out of me for a year - and-a-half, and I really had a problem with him kicking my ass but he did...every fucking day."

Do you still have a passion for boxing? It's not what it used to be with boxers like Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Thomas " Hitman " Hearns... " I still love it. I once did an exhibition with Tommy Hearns in Los Angeles and he hit me so fucking hard on the chin, at about 2 in the afternoon, that I was throwing up at midnight."

That's a " Hitman " experience! "Exactly! But, I mean it was just something I loved, which I started at 11-years-old in the amateurs until I was 18."

On the way back to acting, you've had a few could-have-been films. like for example, Terrance Malick's The Thin Red Line. Why were you cut out of that? " The studio didn't want me. They said you could hire anybody in this town you want, except Mickey Rourke."

A few people got cut from the film ( Adrien Brody and George Clooney's roles were radically trimmed too )... " Yeah, but I gave probably one of my nest performances ever that nobody will ever see."

The other people who got cut out would probably say the same thing... " Yeah well, they say it, but it might not be true. In my case, it was true. You can take that to the bank."

So do you have more of an emotional support now? You go to a psychologist, don't you? " Sure. That's helped me terribly. I was afraid to go in the beginning: I didn't thing there was anything wrong with me."

Sometimes people don't have any one to talk to.... " Yeah, I was lucky because I'd lost everything and fallen on my ass. My wife walking out the door - that was the last straw. I fucked up and she said " You better go and see someone - your crazy." I didn't think I was crazy."

Crazy people never think they're crazy... " Yeah, but I was. I had things broken inside me that I didn't know how to repair. And that's been a work in progress. I take full responsibility for all the mistakes I made and the hell I've raised. A lot of it I feel ashamed about now."

How has this related to your acting? " I don't feel that I deserve to be here. I feel grateful for the second chance. Right now, I can't afford to slip and fuck up once, because I'm not going to go back to where I was eleven or twelve years ago. I've put my armor down and re-invented myself, and I've realized there are rules. I have to be strong in a different way. I'm okay with that. It's not like I felt I gave in, because there's still a fight on."

Did you feel at any point that it was really over? " I will tell you, seven or eight years went by, and I still wasn't working again, and then I thought about all those people who said ' He's finished, he's broke, he's a has-been' were right. I started to think it was true. because I thought I'd start working in six months, but after several years passed, I thought, 'Fuck, yeah it's over'. To live in that kind of shame, to realize that you've fucked up so bad, you're yesterdays news...that was like hell. But then Robert Rodriguez ( Once Upon A Time In Mexico ) and Tony Scott (Man On Fire) gave me an opportunity, and I'm going to make the most of it."

Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66 was an early step in the right direction... " Yeah, at the time, I couldn't get a fucking job. I couldn't pay my rent. Then Vinnie Gallo calls up. I knew who he was sort of, and he says, 'Hey, want to come and do my movie?' I said, ' Sure, but I've got some tax issues; can you pay me in cash?' And he said, 'yeah, how about I give you $100,000 dollars in a paper bag?"

Having spoken to him, that's the way he likes to be paid too! " ( Laughing ) Yeah! I said, 'Fuck, Vinnie! When do you want me?' And he said ' We'll, let me sell you the scene first!' ( Laughing ) It was like four or five pages of dialogue, which I learned and I flew to Buffalo, and I did the scene and was there four hours. Then he said 'I've got the paper bag. Do you want to see it?' I said, 'yeah....Goodbye!' So that was a kick in the ass. I knew they weren't going to give me Mel Gibson roles. I knew it was going to be a little process of roles that I could kick ass and tear up. It was a slow process, because my reputation was still out there, and I was still mental too."

Hasn't Elmore Leonard's Killshot been set up as a Mickey Rourke vehicle? " I don't know if that's going to happen; they've got some roadwork to do with that. Then again Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein have been great to me. They said to Rodriguez, 'If you want him, you can hired.' I'm in Stormbreaker, which is the first movie they're doing with their own company, and we're going to do Sin City 2. I owe those guys, and once I considered them the enemy. I now consider people who are helping me get a career again."

Is it a case of crossing the bridge halfway? " Absolutely. It's an opportunity to have a second chance. I'm not going back to living in that fucking hole and not working, with just me and Loki and the rest of the guys. A lot of time that's all it was."

You've got seven dogs. Do you breed the?, Loki's dad was Bo Jack... " The Great! Her mother's still alive and her brother Monkey. She's also got a retarded brother called Crack Baby. He's not really retarded but we pick on him, because he never lived up to being Bo jack. So, I'll tell him ' You're not Bo Jack's son!' He's nervous. Bo Jack was like a stud. Bo Jack never shook in his fucking life!"

Is he like the Mickey Rourke? "Who?"

Crack Baby? " Fuck no! ( Laughing ) There ain't no shaking going on here! maybe just some fear now and then on a rainy night..."

And he's right. Mickey Rourke doesn't seem to be shaking his second chance. As FILMINK bids adieu, the grizzled actor can be heard from the hotel corridor, shouting from his room to his PR: " Now get me a Broad! hey, send in the ta-ma-toe!" Rourke may have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way to get his name on Hollywood's walk of fame, but the man's got enough wildness left in his spirit to earn a place alongside the coyotes, rattlesnakes and mountain lions celebrated on the sight that warn Hollywood of it's still active wildlife.