Rourke’s dogs are like him: goners given up on by others. And the deal is this: Do not mess with them, do not ask him, “What’s with the Chihuahuas, dude?” If you do you will find yourself on all fours, barking an apology, eating from a straw. But should you run into the actor on the street and wonder about their pedigree, here’s a brief history of the contestants:

1. Loki, a.k.a., Number 1.: Travels the world with Mickey, and is the daughter of Beau Jack the Great (R.I.P.). Mickey’s best friend on the planet, Loki is the last surviving member of a litter of seven. Loki is 15 years old and is a Chihuahua terrier.

2. Jaws the Enforcer, a.k.a. Guapo (“handsome” in Spanish): Rescued from an East L.A. street gang. Listed as “unadoptable” in a pound holding 79 dogs. When he held the snarling dog, it bit his lip, giving him two stitches. An hour later Mickey took Jaws home. Real name (God’s honest): Little Mickey. Jaws is six years old and is a white terrier, albeit a plump one.

3. Ruby, a.k.a. Ruby Baby: four times adopted and returned by unhappy owners—diagnosed with something unpronounceable, Ruby destroyed $4,000 worth of Mickey’s shoes and 36 pairs of designer sunglasses in her first month living with him. Now the sweetest and most gentle of the “kids,” Ruby is five years old and is a white Alaskan mini-Pomeranian.

4. La Negra, a.k.a. Fat Bastard: Rescued from a divorced couple, her brother eaten by coyotes, La Negra has insomnia (like her owner). She is four years old and is a black pug. She likes to watch late-night TV.

5. Bella, a.k.a. Bella Loca: Rescued in Texas on a movie set, she was found with glass stuck in her head and imbedded in her stomach and a nail in her neck. She has bad legs. She is 13 years old and is a Chihuahua terrier.

6. Peppino, a.k.a. Taco Bell: With an apple head and oversize ears, Peppino was a Christmas gift from Mickey to J.P. two years ago. She is two years old and is a chocolate-brown Chihuahua.

“They fill a gap,” explains Rourke of his pound of portly miniatures, oft the objects of puzzlement. “My bed’s never empty. I look forward to coming home and seeing the kids. When I travel to Europe or wherever, Loki’s always with me. She’s like a giant Xanax, you know? I’m not going to get religious on your ass, but I truly believe God created dogs for a cause. They are the greatest companions a man could ever have. For 20 years it’s been Chihuahua City for me.”

Rourke’s litter eat well, often better than he does. To that effect J.P., an experienced chef, keeps them on an unrestricted diet, providing nightly specials, including:

Monday: Boiled chicken breast with rice and veggies.
Tuesday: Ground sirloin with brown rice and carrots.
Wednesday: Boiled Sabrett hot dogs with shredded cheddar cheese.
Thursday: Grilled pork chops with mixed vegetables and rice.
Friday: Grilled chicken breast with brown rice and potatoes.
Saturday: McDonald’s cheeseburgers, no buns, no pickles.
Sunday: Tuna fish with mixed veggies.
Note: Snacks include beef jerky, pizza, peanut butter, Chinese spare ribs, ice cream; Loki drinks Smartwater (“for its extra electrolytes”).

* * * *
To Rourke, good things do not happen to those who wait, and nothing is handed to you. It’s an Irish Catholic thing. To some, there was a brush fire, which started this decade, steadily growing under his anemic career, beginning with his eerily moving role as a transvestite inmate in Steve Buscemi’s 2000 prison drama Animal Factory. The next year his role as a grieving father, opposite Jack Nicholson in Sean Penn’s bleak The Pledge, caught critics’ eyes. And the flames rose higher with his performance as a prosthetics-enhanced vigilante named Marv in Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s Sin City.

And still he is often his own worst enemy. He nearly passed on Darren Aronofsky’s offer for him to play Randy the Ram. “He was tentative,” says Aronofsky. “Boxers have a resistance to wrestling. They see it as fake, suspect. But when he started to meet with some of the old guys, he saw there was real art to it, and was impressed with their universe.”

To hear Rourke tell it, he feared the wrestling part would kill him and, more so, that it would call for him to dig “too far into my dark places.” Aronofsky, a longtime fan of Rourke’s, always had him in mind for the role. “I wanted an actor that had been through the mill a bit,” says the director, who then laid down rules Rourke had to follow or the deal was off: Stay out of the nightclubs, give 100 percent, nothing less. And two major caveats: Rourke couldn’t get paid, initially, and he had to do all his own stunts, abiding to the naturalism Aronofsky was striving for.

“Mickey’s a shy guy down deep, embarrassed of his gifts, and he spends a lot of time running from them,” he says.

Rourke, who has countless injuries from boxing and high school football, was thrown into two months of daily training. While not working out and being slammed to the mat by actual professional wrestlers, he was staying in seedy New Jersey hotels around Asbury Park, one of the settings of the low-budget film. There were zero frills. His physical trainer, an ex-Israeli army commando, was paid even before Rourke.

Some thought it would be easy for him, having been an athlete all his life. He had to put on nearly 40 pounds of muscle, shooting from 190 to 228 pounds. It was grueling. “When we wrapped, I had a mini physical breakdown for four days,” he says. But there were no complaints. “I heard Darren had a real large brain. I heard he did not compromise. I heard he was his own man. He told me how I had ruined my career for the past 15 years by my behavior. He said, ‘You can’t disrespect me. You have to listen to everything I tell you.’ And I go, OK. This guy has a lot of balls. This is the kind of guy I want to work for. He said, ‘If you do all those things, we’ll go to the show.’” The “show” is the Oscars.

The result: “He just completely surrendered. He was completely present. I can’t think of any other actor where it comes so naturally.”

The director says he couldn’t have asked for more, but with Rourke, getting the approval of other wrestlers, and even their fans, was just as important. For one scene Rourke wrestled an opponent in front of a rabid group of 1,500 real wrestling fans.

“At best we thought we could get this actor to imitate a pro wrestler,” says Douglas Crosby, the stunt coordinator. “Instead, he became one in every possible way of the imagination. He left the real audience dumbfounded. He was performing sophisticated maneuvers that only the highest echelon of wrestlers consider attempting.”

Says Afa Anoa’i, a.k.a. the Wild Samoan, Rourke’s head wrestling trainer, “He’s the type of guy that wants to go, go, go! He has that look and that craziness. He walked into the locker room and just dropped his pants, like one of the boys. And he learned to respect our sport. He went beyond, pulled some challenging moves. And he’s got a very bad knee. But he said to me, ‘I’m going to do this one for you, Pops,’ and he sure did.”

Rourke’s coach on the set, Tommy Farra, says, “I never dealt with any actors. I thought he’d be a pain or a pansy. Maybe a little bit of both. Actors have that reputation. But I was pleasantly surprised. He took to wrestling with relative ease, and was an incredibly nice guy. I’m being honest. I know a lot of wrestlers who couldn’t pull off what he did.”

* * * *
To be sure, a good deal of Hollywood is behind Mickey Rourke right now, despite that he’s not always behind them. He refers to one well-known actor as having “the charisma of a soft-boiled egg with legs.” One female acting prodigy, he can’t even comprehend how she gets roles. “Old Mickey” would have named the names, but he asks me to leave them out.

And he hasn’t even learned yet that you have to be a liberal to make it in Hollywood—or at least pretend to be. A Bush supporter, he says, “I think that W. has taken a lot of heat. But after 9/11 there wasn’t much of a solution. I’m glad that we went over and kicked some ass just to pay them back. He’s in a shitty place. They blame him for the fucking hurricane in New Orleans!” “They” would include such outspoken liberal actors as Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon.

His Wrestler costar Evan Rachel Wood, though, only witnessed his gentle side. “He was the main thing that drew me to the film, actually,” she says. “I loved watching him work. I have never seen anyone so focused. He was in the role, and without it being forced Method-acting pretentiousness. Most actors do that because they’re insecure, because they have to live and breathe it to be real, and it ends up being fake. He’s Mickey, one of the craziest guys I know, but with a heart of gold.”

Rourke gave Wood a birthday cake for her 21st. He included handcuffs in its box. “He knows me so well,” she jokes. “By the end of the night, I was handcuffed to a champagne bottle and didn’t know what happened.”

According to Weinstein, Rourke’s looks might now work to his favor. “His façade reflects the intensity of the characters he plays, and people are drawn to his whole persona. His looks offer something different than the Hollywood norm—no one is like him. And, you know, despite his tough exterior he’s really an honest, good person at heart.”

Much is made of Rourke’s face, which can appear inpenetrable and expressive simultaneously. But if literal transformation can come with redemption, then the mask he dons under the straggly, bleach-streaked mane seems to soften with each meeting I have with him. And his eyes appear more alive than they have in years.

* * * *
After over a decade of therapy, Rourke knows what he’s had to do to change himself, fit in somewhat with society, with Hollywood, that cliquish subculture. And there have been, as the therapist might say, “progress” and “breakthroughs.”

“I let my past destroy me,” he says. “I was walking around my adult life with my fists clenched…pointing the finger at everyone but me. “But I finally opened my hands and went, Wow! This is a lot easier than walking around with smoke coming out of my ass. I was looking for this big fight, this war, you know? And it was all in my head.” He now talks about “turning the other cheek,” although a guy recently pissed him off so much by not shaking his hand that, he says, “I wanted to punch this motherfucker right in the fucking mouth and knock all his teeth out.” But cooler heads prevailed. “To this day,” though, he says, “I still think about sticking my hand up this guy’s ass and pulling out his tongue.”

On a final visit to his house one late afternoon, sitting in his living room, Rourke nudges my shoulder and smiles mischievously, pointing to an object under the coffee table. It is a black handgun just lying there for anyone to pick up. I do, feeling its weight. He warns me not to pull the trigger; a live bullet is in the chamber. I set it down.

Says the actor, “I still got that little time bomb inside of me. I’m still capable of fucking things up. It’s like my dog Jaws. Because of what happened to him when he was little, he’ll always growl when you put your hands near him. Sometimes, I mean, people are putting their hands near you to pet you on the back, not hit you over the head. Before, if someone disrespected me, the little hatchet man that lives inside of me would come out. Now, at least, I’m gonna count to 10 before I act on it. It’s like they say, Only a fool trips over the same rock twice. But I could short-circuit in a heartbeat. That little hatchet man, he’s always gonna be there. You can’t change the spots on a horse, you know? I’m always, deep down inside, going to have him running around. I just gotta make sure he stays…quiet.”