ROURKE RAGS ON CRUISE!
Faded actor calls Tom a lazy bum who plays it safe
MOVIE billion-dollar man Tom Cruise is being slammed by bitter Mickey Rourke as “irrelevant” because the screen superstar doesn’t stretch his acting chops.
In a shocking avalanche of envy, Rourke, 69, unloaded on Cruise, 60, whose Top Gun: Maverick has grossed $1.8 billion and is the biggest movie of the year, saying: “The guy’s been doing the same effing part for 35 years ... I got no respect for that.”
Cruise’s flicks from early hits Days of Thunder and A Few Good Men to the recent Mission: Impossible series have made a fortune, but Rourke says: “That doesn’t mean s**t to me … I don’t care about money or power … when I watch Al Pacino or Christopher Walken working, or De Niro’s early work … that’s the kind of actor I want to be like.
“A lot of guys that tried to stretch as actors.”
In the ’80s, young Rourke was being heralded as an upcoming Marlon Brando with hits like Diner, 9½ Weeks and Angel Heart, but his star dimmed with his oddball lifestyle, role choices and plastic surgery.
Now he’s reduced to straight-to-video movies or mostly playing villains in Iron Man 2 and Immortals.
A Hollywood insider says of Rourke’s resentment: “Mickey wants to be like
Marlon Brando, but Brando never made straight-to-video schlock like the movies Mickey has been in over the last five years.
“It’s true the A-listers like Cruise and Brad Pitt don’t exactly challenge themselves with the roles they take on, but they make a lot of cash, so it’s hard not to see Mickey as bitter.
“He’s lost his looks, and his career is in the toilet, so I guess his authenticity is the only thing he has left.”