Mickey Rourke best buds with doctor

6 January 2009 10:57am

Mickey Rourke revealed he endured so many injuries filming The Wrestler he and his doctor became close friends.

The 52-year-old actor stars as ageing wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson in Darren Aronofsky's new film co-starring Evan Rachel Wood and Marisa Tomei.

Mickey revealed at the London premiere in Leicester Square: "A lot of it was painful. Wrestling as everybody knows is kind of entertainment, but the thing is when somebody that waves that much is tossing you around something is gonna snap, crackle and pop. I had my share of going to the doctors.

"The doctor and I ended up on first name terms - I call him John and he calls me Mickey. We got real close, cause I think it was every four or five days I'd have to get this fixed, or medication for this.

"It was like pretty much what the wrestlers go through. They feed off the adrenaline of the crowd and then they'll go one step further and just for that moment, for that feeling and 65, 70 per cent of the time they don't land right and they sacrifice their bodies for the sake of the crowd and the adrenaline rush."

The Sin City star - who took a break from acting to compete as a professional boxer - arrived at the premiere on Monday night smoking a cigar but he had been up early that morning training in Hyde Park.

His trainer Tunde Ajayi revealed: "He's fit, not as fit as he could be, but he had to gain a lot of weight for this film."

The Wrestler is released on January 16.

© The Press Association