Test On a muggy Sunday afternoon in late September, deep in-side the frankincense-heavy rectory of 42nd Street’s Holy Cross Church, Father Peter Colapietro is touring me through the skeletal wreckage of his kitchen, burnt recently in an electrical fire by “some idiot.”

Father Pete suggests we go out to a nearby restaurant, “throw down a belt” of Rebel Yell, and “blow some smoke.” His church is poor by Manhattan standards despite its 1852 vintage. It’s a ragged, grand red-brick slice of sanctuary for the down and out between soup-line Hell’s Kitchen and the triple-X remnant of Times Square. The priest is concerned about how to pay for the reconstruction of his church, which he calls the “crossroads of the world.” But he’s seen worse damaged goods.

Like Mickey Rourke, his friend and parishioner, who after a sudden return to the spotlight spurred by a critically lauded comeback role in Darren Aronofsky’s epic new anti-Rocky drama, The Wrestler, now finds himself at a crossroads of his own: one of staying committed to rebuilding his life and career or letting it fall to pieces again.

“Comeback?” says the actor. “When people come up to me and say, ‘You’re back,’ I say, ‘Brother, you don’t know where I’ve been.’” Ten years ago the straggly Method performer—who throughout the 1980s scene-robbed and owned such indelible films as Diner, Rumble Fish, Barfly, and The Pope of Greenwich Village, but whose acting career was outweighed and beaten to a pulp by an on-again, off-again professional boxing career, a mutually abusive marriage (to sultry supermodel Carré Otis, from 1992 to 1998), snot flings with gossip columnists, Miami Beach goon-squadding, exploding cheekbones, movie-set walk-offs, and basic don’t-you-know-who-I-am Assholery 101—had entered the church like a man without a home, requesting the presence of a man of the cloth.

Father Pete knew who he was, despite “it taking me 15 times to watch Angel Heart [Rourke’s 1987 film about devil pacts, costarring Robert De Niro as Lucifer] and still not understand what the fuck was going on.”

“It was Mickey Rourke, and Mickey Rourke was in trouble,” says the priest, a robust, expletive-spouting Bronx native. “He needed someone to talk to. He needed an anchor. I told him that we are all our own worst enemies. But Mickey was fighting the Axis powers in his head: Germany, Japan, and Italy. I can’t go deeper than that.”

Rourke, however, can. Recalling one of his lowest moments, he says, “I was about to commit two mortal sins.” His career in a stranglehold, his billfold empty, his wife walking, his gold-plated Rolls-Royce, motor­cycles, and other toys sold off to pay bills, he was living in rentals and hotel rooms, looking for lost love and a good day’s work. Having come off such lamentable oil spillage as 1997’s Dennis Rodman–costarring lark Double Team, as well as the 1991 big-budget bomb Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and the camp-porno follow-up to 9½ Weeks, Wild Orchid (costarring his future wife, Otis), he was seriously contemplating suicide. That was the first mortal sin. The second: He was planning to murder, as he puts it, “a guy who raped Carré when she was on heroin and beat her up.”

“He needed someone to talk to, someone nonjudgmental,” recalls Father Pete. “That’s what confession is about. He admitted he had fucked up his relationship with his wife. He had something written down, a letter he’d written to Carré—a note of a reconciliatory nature. I told him, ‘Let’s fold it up and put it behind the statue of Saint Jude.’ He went straight to the statue. That was a good sign.” Saint Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes. “He’s the guy to talk to when things seem totally hopeless and you need an intercession by God,” says Father Pete. Rourke lit a candle for a prayer, then tucked his note behind the wooden sculpture of the saint, within the dimly lit sanctuary. Father Pete told him, “This isn’t magic. But God loves you, and in the end, no matter how long it takes, He will give you the strength you need.” Then the priest and the actor went back to the rectory to drink red wine and smoke cigarettes.

Fast-forward back to this rainy September day and inside the church: Father Pete and I search for Rourke’s note to Otis from so long ago. We find several other hopeless-cause notes, but Rourke’s is long gone, just like Otis herself. Rourke, however, is still around, still in contact with the priest. Father Pete heard from him a day before our meeting at Holy Cross, and he says of the actor, “He sounds better than he has in years!” But he still sounds concerned. “Still, he’s worrying about falling apart.

“I’ll pray for him,” says the priest, “I really will.”

* * * *
Mickey Rourke truly had it all: fancy cars, hot supermodel wife, Hollywood Hills compound, entourage of adulators, and one of the most promising careers since Nicholson and Brando. Rising out of the ghetto in South Florida, moving to New York, then La-La, he landed his first notable short role in 1981’s neo-noir Body Heat while working at a drag queen bar in Hollywood. As a charismatic arsonist, he easily overshadowed the stars, William Hurt and Kathleen Turner—catapulting his career forward on the A-list train. That was the ’80s, his golden years. With his Irish good looks, mischievous smile, and world-weary eyes—always spelling trouble—his talent lay in making character roles leads. But he fought with directors, made scenes at nightclubs, got arrested for stupid things. In 1991, after one flop too many, he made the unprecedented and ill-conceived move of leaving Hollywood to become a professional boxer. He wasn’t bad. He won some big matches over a five-year career, but destroyed his Hollywood looks. Reconstructive surgery contributed to his somewhat waxen appearance today. “I don’t watch my films. I hate watching myself,” he says. “I haven’t seen The Wrestler, and I don’t plan to, either.”

Rourke’s downfall occurred simultaneously with his marriage to Otis. It was tumultuous tabloid fodder up until its final, ugly flame-out in 1998. The money, the friends, the love life, the looks, the career, all gone.

But now the gods appear to be favoring him again. Ever since the Venice International Film Festival awarded its highest honor to The Wrestler—the New Jersey–set drama about a washed-up 1980s ring champion named Randy “the Ram” Robinson, attempting a second round in his career and troubled life—the accolades for Rourke’s starring performance have made him a likely candidate for the Best Actor Oscar. His ravaged, self-effacing role in the film (costarring Marisa Tomei as an aging stripper with a heart of gold and Evan Rachel Wood as Rourke’s estranged lesbian daughter) has brought him the best reviews of his life.

Variety offered up a sample rave: “Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances.” Harvey Weinstein, whose production company gave Rourke his first career jump-start with 2005’s graphic-novel adaptation of Sin City, says of the new film, “It’s one of those epic pictures that really move you. This is a winner for Mickey—maybe the winner. He’s really pulling out the stops.”

And in his real life Rourke seems to be making the right moves as well. He left the place that ostracized him, Hollywood, for the place that first embraced him, New York City, “where it all began.” And so with the comeback film of a bone-crushing lifetime, the magnificent disaster that is—or was—Mickey Rourke is witness to his own resurrection. But is the pugilist finally at rest? Can he overcome his own worst enemy—himself? Rise up, and stay there? Or fuck up, and go nowhere? The stakes are bigger than just a career.