Ex-supermodel Carre Otis has been mostly silent about her high-profile marriage – and divorce – to Oscar-nominated actor Mickey Rourke. But when Rourke started bringing up their marriage again in the wake of his recent career resurgence, Otis refused to hold back.
“Beauty, Disrupted,” Otis’s revealing autobiography, attempts to set the record straight on her combustible marriage to “The Wrestler” star. The book is far more than the “she said” side of a shattered romance. Otis shares her tumultuous days as a young model, recounts the repeated sexual abuse she suffered through the years and tells how she conquered addiction through a sturdy application of Buddhism and inner strength.
Otis, a married mother of two who now calls a small Colorado town home, has been writing fiction for years based on her dysfunctional California upbringing before the notion of an autobiography came up.
“I actually created what I hoped would be a television show called ‘Marin Diaries,'” Otis says. Rourke’s public comments about their relationship convinced her to set that project aside to tell her own story.
“On one hand, it had nothing to do with Mickey, and on the other hand, it was, ‘oh, no you don’t,'” she says of Rourke’s media blitz, which she says included a false accusation that she was once gang raped. “I had been silent for so long and very diplomatic. In a way it’s very textbook abuse survivor, continue to protect and be silent about it.”
“Beauty, Disrupted” details how Rourke controlled Otis’s modeling career, physically abused her, and repeatedly put her in harm’s way. The latter ranged from an impromptu dinner with noted mobster John Gotti to the time when she shot herself in the shoulder after Rourke put a loaded gun in her purse.
Rourke is a big part of “Disrupted,” but “the theme of victim and perpetrator goes throughout that lifetime for me,” she says.
The brunette stunner entered the modeling industry as a teenager, and she quickly fell prey to industry scoundrels as well as an unspoken rule to stay as thin as humanly possible. The unprepared Otis, who grew up with an alcoholic father, eventually took up cocaine and heroin to cope. It wasn’t until years later, after learning she had three small holes in her heart, that she realized she suffered from an eating disorder.
Writing “Beauty, Disrupted” wasn’t difficult for her, but seeing the manuscript in front of her proved a challenge.
“It was real, and not just in my head,” she explains. But the hardest part was yet to come – recording the audio version of her life story.
“That was me putting myself to the test, having to talk out loud through a rape scene with men I didn’t know,” she says.
Otis is talking more than ever now to promote her book, but it’s also a chance to sound off on what she hopes will change in both the modeling industry and popular culture.
The 43-year-old Otis can still turn heads, although she’d much rather talk about the joyful insanity of having two toddlers under her roof. When asked about the current state of our pop culture, an edge overcomes her voice.
“I think, in general, the premature sexualizing that’s going on in our culture is unbelievable. We’ve got ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’… are you fucking kidding me? It’s pedophilia… it should be illegal,” she says. “Sex is something sacred, and our bodies are something sacred. There’s so much exploitation going on, and the media isn’t helping… there is a line that we cannot cross… somebody’s got to behave like the adults.”
That’s something that was missing during her early modeling days, and she suspects little has changed since then.
“From the outside looking in I still see really young girls in that industry in sexually provocative ads or scantily dressed and really young girls who are really, really skinny,” she says. “This is the one industry where 98 percent of the people they’re employing are minors, but there’s no union, no health insurance, no mentors, no rules and no regulation.”
For many readers, “Beauty, Disrupted” will be a chance to relive the Otis/Rourke romance. Even Otis can look back on that period with a modicum of fondness.
“We shared a great love… we were in each other’s lives for a long time. Part of this book is taking responsibility and not pointing the finger and saying I had nothing to do with it,” she says. “That relationship is so many people’s relationships in its dysfunction, in its obsession.”
She doesn’t expect Rourke will want to talk about the book, or their past, any time soon.
“I had such hopes for so long that they’re could be some closure, but there are some people who don’t change,” she says. “I hope he’s happy, but looking at him I still see a lot of suffering.”
Otis attempted at an acting career in the early 90s, co-starring in the steamy drama “Wild Orchid” alongside Rourke. She admits she was terrible and says they couldn’t pay her enough to take a second stab at it. She’d rather concentrate on her family, her husband, and her writing career.
Not every famous person gets a second chance like Otis. Too many succumb to drugs, alcohol or the tangential fallout from celebrity.
Otis was one of the lucky ones, and she rattles off the reasons why.
“Hard work, discipline, lots of therapy, and really making a choice to live in another way and then doing whatever the fuck it takes to get there,” she says regarding her road to recovery. “Even if it means going to therapy five days a week … whatever it takes.”