As Rourke says multiple times during the roughly five minute clip, the idea of asking strangers for financial help is not something he’d ever want to do. “That’s not me. I’d rather… If I needed money, I wouldn’t ask for no fucking charity, I’d rather stick a gun up my ass and pull the trigger,” the 9 ½ Weeks actor says. “My life is very simple, I don’t go to outside sources like that. Yeah, it is embarrassing, but I’m sure I’ll get over it like anything else, everything else.”
“Don’t give any money. And if you gave money, get it back,” he continued, directed at any who may have already donated. (GoFundMe does list a Giving Guarantee with instructions on how to get a donation refunded.) “Listen, I’ve done a really terrible job of managing my career. I wasn’t very diplomatic. I had to go to over 20 years of therapy to get over the damage that was done to me years ago,” says Rourke. “I worked very hard to work through that, and I’m not that person anymore,” he added, suggesting that professional collaborators like Robert Rodriguez, Francis Ford Coppola, or Darren Aronofsky would attest to this.
As for his living situation, Rourke explained, “I was in a really bad situation with a place I was renting. Everything was good for five or six years and then two scumbags from New York bought the house and they wouldn’t fix anything, so I said I’m not paying rent. Because there’s mice, there’s rats, the floor is rotten, one bathtub there’s no water, two different sinks there was no water. And this was all coming at the same time.” He then suggested, “I don’t know if those two scumbags are behind it—I mean, we’re gonna go to court. But I would never ask strangers or fans or anybody for a nickel. I mean, that’s not my style.”
Rourke was reportedly served an eviction notice, the Los Angeles Times reported on December 30, that warned him to leave the unit by December 18. He reportedly owed nearly $60,000 in rent. “It’s humiliating and it’s really fucking embarrassing,” Rourke said in the video. However, he closed out the message by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and hoped that you have a good one next year if you didn’t this year.
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