Mickey Rourke: Wrestling With Demons is an intimate and revealing portrait of a complex man who happens to be one of the most intriguing actors of our time. Written with passion, insight and expertise by respected entertainment journalist Sandro Monetti, this is the compelling story of how Mickey Rourke wrestled his demons and won.

Diner, Rumble Fish, 9½ Weeks, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Angel Heart— Mickey Rourke ignited movie screens throughout the 1980s in a series of scorching performances that brought the most coveted scripts and the hottest directors in Tinseltown to his door. The heir to Brando, the critics called him, the next De Niro. But the quixotic actor turned down the choicest roles. Indulging a taste for hot women and fast motorcycles, he partied all night, showed up late on set, fought with his producers, and made a string of bad decisions that derailed the career of the most promising actor since James Dean. Disillusioned, Mickey Rourke decided to leave acting—for boxing!

As a professional boxer, he was undefeated in eight fights, but the pummeling he took in the ring destroyed his pretty-boy looks, and a series of injuries left him with nerve damage, brain damage, and problems with his memory and balance. Battered and broken, Mickey Rourke decided to leave boxing—for acting!

After several lean years in box-office flops, Mickey's magic appeared in the form of a low-budget but high-quality movie in which the washed-up actor played a washed-up wrestler. His stunning lead performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson in The Wrestler garnered an Oscar nomination. Mickey Rourke was back, with a vengeance!

In Mickey Rourke: Wrestling With Demons, Monetti traces the rise and follies of the comeback king of Hollywood: From a tortured childhood in Schenectady and a troubled youth in Miami, where he trained at the Fifth Street Gym by day and strutted the streets in platform shoes and silk pants by night. To his lonely years at the Actor's Studio. Through countless women and two divorces, the deaths of his beloved brother Joey and his adored dog Loki, drugs and alcohol, fights and arrests, depression, thoughts of suicide, and years of therapy.

Monetti explains how the method actor prepared for his iconic roles and reveals how he landed some of his best parts, including the biggest box office hit of his career with Iron Man 2. He identifies the star-making roles Rourke turned down. He divulges the name of the actor who, in early days, when the producers could not raise enough money on the Rourke name, briefly replaced Mickey in The Wrestler. The pages are alive with stories of Hollywood legends and rock royalty: Sean Penn, Kim Basinger, Robert Downey Jr., Sylvester Stallone, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and David Bowie.