Mickey Rourke Trashes Tom Cruise: He’s Played the ‘Same Part for 35 Effing Years’

Hollywood star and boxer Mickey Rourke has taken a swing at a much bigger Hollywood star — Tom Cruise, arguing that the Top Gun: Maverick actor no longer takes creative risks and is essentially playing the same role over and over.

Mickey Rourke called Cruise “irrelevant” during a recent interview with Piers Morgan on the Fox Nation streaming service.

“That doesn’t mean shit to me,” Rourke said when asked about the box office success of the Top Gun sequel.

“The guy been doing the same part for 35 effing years. I got no respect for that,” he continued. “I don’t care about money or power. I care about when I watch Al Pacino or [Christopher] Walken working, or De Niro’s early work and Richard Harris’s work and Ray Winstone’s work, that’s the kind of actor I want to be like. Like [Montgomery] Clift and [Marlon] Brando back in the day. A lot of guys that tried to stretch as actors.”

When Morgan asked Rourke if he thinks Cruise is a good actor, he replied, “I think he’s irrelevant, in my world.”

Watch below:

In recent years, Cruise has focused his career almost entirely on action blockbusters like the Mission: Impossible movies. Once upon a time, he took artistic risks with movies like Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.

Mickey Rourke spoke about his career flameout following his promising start in the 80s.

“I take the blame for it,” he said. “I became, as my therapist told me, a scary person to deal with. I didn’t know how to turn the off switch off.”

He added: “People who deal from an authoritarian place — producers, who think they can treat you a certain way because they’re the ones with the money and the power — they finally ran into a cat who didn’t give a fuck about their money and power.”

When Morgan asked him for his thoughts on cancel culture, Rourke replied: “I don’t think any body should have to apologize for what their personal opinion is on any matter unless their personal opinion is very narrow-minded is going to hurt other people.”

Later in the interview, Rourke broke down crying when discussing the war in Ukraine, saying he sympathized for Ukrainian civilians who have suffered under the Russian invasion.

Mickey Rourke, who received an Oscar nomination for 2008’s The Wrestler, recently filmed a role for Roman Polanski’s next movie, The Palace.

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