# What happened to Mickey Rourke's voice, face, body

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-mickey-rourkes-voice-face-body/476414>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [December 9, 2008, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-mickey-rourkes-voice-face-body/476414 "2008-12-09T17:15:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![constantine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3bc359/32.png) [@constantine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constantine)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-mickey-rourkes-voice-face-body/476414/1 "2008-12-09T17:15:54Z")

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I saw Mickey Rourke in a screening of his new movie “The Wrestler.” First of all, I thought he did a great job in the title role. But I found it hard to imagine that this was the same person who starred in Diner and Barfly. For one thing, his voice sounds much lower and much more gravely. Also his face looks significantly different. And his body is very pumped up.

Does anybody know the story on this guy. I compare him to other actors from Diner, Kevin Bacon, Timothy Daly, Paul Reiser, all those guys look older than they did 20 years ago. But they don’t look utterly transformed. Mickey Rourke looks and sounds like a completely different person.

What happened?

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**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-mickey-rourkes-voice-face-body/476414/2 "2008-12-09T18:27:41Z")

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Smoking several packs a day accounts for the voice. Plastic surgery accounts for the face. And lots of working out accounts for the body.

Rourke’s a weird guy.

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**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-mickey-rourkes-voice-face-body/476414/3 "2008-12-09T18:31:34Z")

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From 1991 to 1995, Rourke quit acting to box. That probably accounts for the lumpy face. Looks like a pug’s mug.

And yeah, he’s had some bad plastic surgery, too. Look at the difference from [here](http://content.mahalo.com/images/c/c3/MickeyRourkeMugShot.jpg) to [here](http://hitdawall.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/mickey-rourke-bad.jpg).

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**Author:** ![xanthous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/53a042/32.png) [@xanthous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xanthous)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-mickey-rourkes-voice-face-body/476414/4 "2008-12-09T23:13:05Z")

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[I miss this Mickey Rourke.](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v318/annewaldron/Picture1.png) I dated a guy that looked just like (young) him in high school. He was a fox—_and_ a bad boy—the total package!