Rourke's next big role, in "The Pope of Greenwich Village" (1984), is more of his tough-cookie, sexy criminal shtick. The oily pompadour that is his hair in virtually every movie reaches its most outrageous elevation here.

Daryl Hannah is his dimwit aerobic instructor girlfriend, whose role primarily consists of pulling her pants on and off. This film marks the beginning of a standard Rourke movie theme: a basic dislike for women, or at least the stupid female roles that always seem to disgrace his scripts. He has all the power: Daryl slaps him, he smiles that fuck-you smile, flips up the collar of his leather blazer, and walks away. She bleats "Charlie!" in her midriff leotard, he keeps walking. It seems this role inspired Hollywood to cast Rourke whenever they needed a guy to casually and cruelly dominate whimpering, undressed females.

If any one sin could be said to be responsible for the downfall of Mickey Rourke, that sin would probably be Vanity. While managing, to his credit, not to fall into the single-character, one-dimensional tough-guy glue trap that macho actors like De Niro or Nicholson sank into, Rourke suffered from a different kind of hubris: Though essentially an emotionally fearless actor with a commendable flair for vulnerability, naked despair and believable accents, he continually chose characters who were either fucking or fighting.

Rourke's credibility was most harmed, it seems, by his slide into mainstream softcore.

"9-1/2 Weeks" (1986), Rourke's recognized star turn, features him as John, a smirking Wall Street sadist. He feeds Kim Basinger like a baby, he buys her toys and balloons and does cruel and nasty sex to her. The movie is grotesque; Basinger's character is shriekingly infantile, down to pigeon toes and white ankle socks, and absurdly obedient; Rourke is just creepy, and the role seems to tap into a dangerous reservoir of abject misanthropy and scumminess in the actor. It's not all his fault; Basinger comes off so shrill, moronic and embarrassing that at a certain point you are rooting for Mickey to hit her with a belt (Basinger is said to have referred to her costar, for unspecified reasons, as "the human ashtray").

Rourke comes off as ugly and jaded in "9-1/2 Weeks" in a way that suggests a deeper level of psychic disease than his character alone is responsible for. Perhaps he resented being the vehicle that brought S/M home to the office girls of America. Who could blame him?

Nineteen eighty-seven was, for cabalistic Hollywood reasons, the Year of the Rourke, with three of his better movies coming out one atop the other.

"Angel Heart" offered Rourke a meaty role and a healthy return to being actorly -- but his respectable performance was buried beneath the public's tittering shock at his willingness to enact "controversial," "X-rated" pumping-buttock sex shots with a thrashing Lisa Bonet.

Rourke pulls off an entirely believable Brooklyn accent and has a very legitimate moment of bottomless despair as the Faustian plot is revealed. "Angel Heart" is a good example of Rourke's ability to pull off emotionally gymnastic roles; he never shrank from painful and weepy territory that fellow tough-but-pretty actors, like Steve McQueen, deliberately avoided. Sensationalism and soft porn robbed him, here, of what might have been real kudos for his skill.

Rourke is most universally beloved for his portrayal of Charles Bukowski's alter ego Henry Chinaski in "Barfly." While a bit over the top, the role is funky, ugly and lovable in a way his other characters were not. Audiences must have breathed a collective sigh of relief to see Rourke in a role that wasn't consumed by self-loathing.

"Barfly" contains the closest Rourke comes, in his entire career, to a moment of unqualified happiness, during the oft-quoted victory toast: "To my friends!" Bukowski wrote about Rourke, giving him the name Jack Bledsoe in his roman á clef "Hollywood," a book about the making of "Barfly." Bukowski liked Rourke and was fairly dazzled by him. There is a good scene in which Bledsoe (Rourke) has brought his obnoxiously fabulous Hollywood Harley-Davidson crew to the set, and is introducing them to Bukowski:

"His buddies leaned against the bar, backs to the bar, facing the crowd. They each held a beer bottle, except for Jack who had a 7-Up. They were dressed in leather jackets, scarves, leather pants, boots ... Jack introduced us to each of his buddies.

"This is Blackjack Harry ..."

"Hi, man ..."

"This is The Scourge ..."

"Hello there ..."

"This is the Nightworm ..."

"Hey, hey!"

"This is Dogcatcher ..."

"Too much!"

"This is 3-Ball Eddie ..."

"God damn .."

"This is FastFart ..."

"Pleased to meet ya ..."

"And Pussykiller ..."

"Yeah ..."

And that was it. They all seemed to be fine fellows but they looked a little on-stage ...

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