What Height Is Mickey Rourke?

Mickey Rourke went from 80s stardom to B-movie doldrums to comeback king, but how tall is he? Actor and former boxer Mickey Rourke got his Hollywood break in 1981 playing arsonist Teddy Lewis in Lawrence Kasdan’s sultry neo-noir thriller Body Heat, which co-starred Kathleen Turner and William Hurt. Critically acclaimed roles in Barry Levinson’s coming-of-age comedy-drama Diner and Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish followed and by the end of the 1980s – with further films like 9 ½ Weeks and Barfly under his belt – Mickey Rourke was one of the decade’s most bankable stars.

The 1990s weren’t so good to Mickey Rourke. As his reputation as a difficult actor to work with spread, work started to dwindle and Rourke was left with box office flops like Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man and Desperate Hours on his hands. The downturn in his acting career prompted Rourke to return to boxing – a sport he’d taken up in his youth – but the move resulted in facial injuries that required reconstructive surgery and considerably altered his physical appearance.

By the mid-2000s, however, Rourke was enjoying something of a career renaissance thanks to parts in films like Robert Rodriguez’s neo-Western Once Upon A Time In Mexico and Tony Scott’s thriller Man On Fire. Rourke collaborated again with Robert Rodriguez on the 2005 film Sin City, adapted from Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the same name. His Sin City role was Marv – a hulking, seven-foot-tall ex-convict who is framed for murder and vows revenge. Although Marv’s imposing physique would suggest that Rourke is unusually tall himself, according to the website Celeb Heights he is a far more regular five feet eleven inches tall.

Rourke’s comeback was cemented when he played another physically imposing character – past his prime pro-wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson in Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 drama The Wrestler. The film was critically acclaimed upon release and earned Rourke his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Although Rourke lost out to Sean Penn, he did take home a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for his performance in The Wrestler.

Since his roles in Sin City and The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke has taken on plenty more tough guy parts. He played Soviet super-villain Ivan Vanko (AKA Whiplash) in 2010’s Iron Man 2, mercenary Tool in The Expendables and reprised his Marv role for sequel Sin City: A Dame To Kill For. More recently, he played boxing coach Frank Donovan in sports drama Tiger and The Projectionist in 2019 horror anthology Nightmare Cinema.