He brawls, he brags, he trashes hotel suites. Now, Mickey Rourke is cleaning up his act. But will his fans adore the banker as much as the boxer? Julie Baumgold checks out his new image.

Mickey Makes Up

Looking down on his skinny leather knee, I saw the smudge of movie make-up that didn’t quite cover the tattoo under his thumb. The model came down the runway, He jiggled his pointed boot toe, "I call that one the Sleepwalker," said Mickey Rourke. "She always looks like she is walking in her sleep."

"I bet you could wake her up," I said.

"I bet I could," whispered Rourke. He turned to me and I saw stubble, a bit of grease on the hair, dark shades over nightclub eyes, and we both laughed, for he is such a bad boy.

I know the type. Bad boys drink and spill red wine on carpets. They turn over lamps on their way to pulling some model down on the bed. They need bodyguards to keep them from slugging photographers and making fools of themselves. They kick girls out of bed and make them take cabs home. They don’t walk them to the door or call, yet women love them because they are thin and have a look that says, "This is it for you, babe." Or at least, "This could be it, if I decided to bother." Rourke used to do some of those things but he’s trying to reform.

He and I watched the models and discussed their sparring styles as they danced down the runway in boxing gloves and satin shorts. When the show was over, Rourke’s minders pulled him up onto the runway and the photographers closed in, for that particular week he was big news, a tabloid dream boy: Mickey the model stalker. Mickey the hotel trasher. Mickey moving through the night on his own whirl-wind of fear as his terrified on-again-off-again ex girlfriend, Carre Otis (they have since got back together), fled . He was tough Mickey Rourke with his pack of minders, closing down clubs, slumped in a booth eyeing teenage models at play, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Rourke, a tough guy connected to tough guys, storming around New York full of threat and thunder, ready to explode - or at least that’s the impression he would like to give : quiet threat followed by the hush of respect. He is from Miami slums and has had a hard life, some of it his own making. He has been a bouncer in transvestite clubs, lived in dives, ridden his Harley, and sat in courtrooms to support friends such as mafia boss John Gotti. His only higher education was when an older, gay man gave him books and took him to the theatre. His age is somewhere between 38 and 43. Eight years ago, he walked away from movie stardom but now he’s back and ready to behave. Almost.

After fate had seated us together at Ralph Lauren’s New York show, I felt an impulse to re-acquaint myself with his oeuvre. In some of his films, he specializes in making nice girls do things they would never have done before - like crawl. He brings the decent girl to the edge to stare with him into the void, delirious with freshly discovered sexual joy.

"Haven’t you ever felt like that – primal, insatiably, hungry?" he says to Carre Otis in Wild Orchid, as she watches a woman bouncing ecstatically on a man’s naked lap in the back of a limousine. Or, "Gorman’s like a virus. Once you get him, he won’t go away," says a woman of Rourke’s character in White Sands.

From his performance as John, the Wall Street arbitrageur with stubble and a good overcoat in 9/12 Weeks, certain hoarsely muttered lines remain: "Will you take your dress off?"; May I blindfold you?" And then there is John holding the ice cube over Kim Basinger’s character, stroking her with it, running it under her panty rim, the drop falling into her pearly concavities. John feeding her cherries with her eyes closed: rubbing her long legs with honey; and picking out the riding crops.

Rourke film image is full of danger and risk. He is a guy like Gorman, who puts a gun to a woman’s head and pulls the trigger just to see the look in her eyes. His look is film noir, a person after a hard night, a lost soul could who could be redeemed by the love of a woman, whom he’d then corrupt because of circumstances beyond his control.

When fevered characters like this are cured, they are pale specters. Veneers of good health, good intentions and expensive sunglasses can’t mask their eyes, which are red because they are contrary devils. Sometimes they look dirty and don’t shave. Sometimes they have dirt under their nails. They look hard at any woman just to give her a thrill.

They wear boots and do not change their socks. Rourke, however, is very clean and co-operative too, for hours.

After the shows, we meet again for a photographic shoot. He is wearing a long, black leather jacket over a sleeveless undershirt; a gold chain; low-riding, wide tan pants, possibly silk, which kind of sink below his flat, muscled stomach; and big, new white sneakers in which he could dance like a boxer if he wanted. His arms are covered with tattoos of things that look like daggers and scorpions, disturbing things you don’t want to look at too closely. One is a cross that says CARRE FOREVER. He is naked under his pants, which creates a moment of confusion and a brief halt in proceedings. The fashion director asks the associate fashion editor to go out and buy some underwear.

"Anything but Calvin Klein," says Rourke, who was not allowed into Calvin’s show. "I never wear underwear. You wear underwear? " he asks his friends. One of them is his PR man, Richard Pollmann, whose other clients include Heidi Fleiss and Tupac Shakur, who has recently finished filming Bullet with Rourke. Tupac, who has just been convicted of sexual abuse, is in the hospital, having five bullet wounds treated. Pollmann specializes in trouble. He spends a lot of time on his portable phone, fending off low-rent requests.

As Rourke goes through a rack of suits, trying on the jackets, he shows an arcane knowledge of clothes. "Do you know that flowered shirt from Dolce ( & Gabbana) , the one with the double cuffs?" he asks the stylist. "I haven’t worn a single- breasted three -piece suit in years," he says, but actually he has a bedroom just for his clothes. He has 73 suits and 26 tuxedos. When he goes into a store, he always says, I want two of these, three of those. He can go 10 rounds with a pro and spot Gucci shoes.

He sits down at the mirror. His face is slightly crooked and full of injuries a movie star should not have. He has a haematoma about his lip that hurts. He has a split cheek- bone and can’t see well out of one eye. His nose cartilage has been severely disrupted. It hurts to shave but he does because he is behaving.

Eight years ago, after making the movie, 9/12 Weeks, Rourke gave up on Hollywood because making movies was "too easy." Also, the passion was gone.

"Where is your passion?" I asked him, knowing I was approaching very dangerous territory.

"I’m looking for it, "he said.

He went to Miami, boxed professionally, and made movies when the money ran out. He had nine fights and won seven. He has three more bouts planned and says he will stop at 13. But he’s back to acting now.

"I tore myself down so low after making 91/2 Weeks. I did not want to be that guy in the long, dark coat. I went broke, so now I’m back to the long, dark coat.

"I’ve had one broken cheekbone, two broken ribs, a broken toe, four broken knuckles, a split tongue..."

Rourke , like other artists, understands that you have to take the forbidden risks, face your demons and invent new ones. You must dance out on that shaky limb, even if you know it will crack and you can hear it splintering.

So Rourke loved and fought and was jeered as a dilettante during this time. He made a few movies but feels he sank pretty low into the bog. He spent years running away from the movie star with the high hair and pretty-boy face.

He shaved his head, got his faced messed up ‘But it’s okay. I understand now. Today, its’ not acting . It’s a business. You can do it on steroids...You make $10 million a movie, take a lot of steroids and be a movie star. I’m not angry at doing it."

His friend, Steve, and ex-model, is reading or talking into the phone, making plans for the night, which, for Rourke usually goes on until 9:30 in the morning.

"I eat only one meal a day. That’s how I keep in shape, he says. It’s kinda of a breakfast-lunch meal, and then he sits in restaurants, picking at his dinner and waiting for the dark. He spends a lot of time preparing for the clubs. They take a picture of him in a stocking cap and Versace leather pants, looking wasted, like trouble. He has a lot of carefully cultivated poses but never looks at pictures of himself. Nor does he read articles about himself, he feels they have all trashed him. He does his best work on the first take.

"And in the last round," he says.

"Are you going to a retire champ?"

"Just not defeated," he says.

Beautiful women fear him. Men look at him and want to punch him out or lure him to bed -or so the legend goes.

Actually, he can be a gentle soul, a man who can love to the point of obsession and perhaps violence. His dogs are Chihuahua’s. Want to make something of it?

Rourke says the maker of 91/2 Weeks wants him to do a sequel. I tell him I wondered why he and Basinger never got together, and that I saw four of his movies the previous day. When I tell him which ones, he pulls faces, saying he hates them. He would have chosen FTW (which stands for "Fuck The World") , Francesco ( in which he was Saint Francis of Assisi ) and Homeboy.

He is out on the set, looking cool in his suits, turning his good side – the right – to the camera. ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ plays at his request. Richard Pollmann is on phone with a woman. "Tell her to jump out the window, headfirst," says Rourke , who despite his suit , has not completely evolved into a good boy. I think how I would dress him against type : leather and cashmere , jeans with a vicuna coat, evening slippers , boxer shorts , loafers of a feminine cut, scarves , a poet’s shirt with Armani velvet pants, and a glass in his hand in a dim restaurant as he prepares to step into the moonlight , his kindest medium.Or nothing.

"He wants to buy all the clothes he has worn," says Pollmann .We are many hours into the shoot, and Rourke has a lot of pain in the lip awaiting surgery. “You look like a banker “says Pollmann. Rourke punches him in the arm. Pollmann cradles the arm, which really hurts and, since it’s his phone arm, it’s a crucial appendage.

"Hey your hands are lethal weapons," someone says.

"My hands are my penis," says Rourke.

Losi, the hairstylist, whom he insists on calling Lulu, is working on him. "Don’t give him horns," someone says.

"Where’s my girl?" he says, meaning his buddy, Steve. He wants another cigarette. His eyes squint. His face is full of pending trouble. Everyone applauds at the end of the shoot. His good-boy clothes are put away, and he’s back in his leather and shades. Like a gent and the stand-up guy-star he is, Rourke shakes hands and thanks people. When he wants to make a deal, his handshake is firm, but when Mickey Rourke says goodbye, his hand melts away, barely a clasp. Sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye at the right time, especially for a fighter.

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