LONDON - Actor Mickey Rourke, who for years was in obscurity after a promising start, makes a comeback with his latest movie ‘The Wrestler’ and says he could connect with the character because it was close to his real life.

Thesun.co.uk reports that Rourke had a promising start with hits like ‘Angel Heart’ and ‘Nine 1/2 Weeks’ in the 1980s, but his difficult behaviour almost ruined his career. But his portrayal as Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson in ‘The Wrestler’ might earn him his first Oscar trophy.

He said: ‘Randy is a wrestler at the twilight of his career. Rather he has been at the twilight of his career for several years. He thinks he has one more game in him - one more shot. He wants to come back again. I know what that’s like. Randy was somebody 20 years ago and so was Mickey Rourke.’

He added: ‘When you used to be a somebody and you aren’t anybody any more, you live in what my doctor calls a state of shame. It’s when you had a career, then you mess up and you don’t have a career any more - and it’s all your fault. Hollywood is a very unforgiving place. I took a nosedive down all by myself, no one pushed me. I was on the bench for 13 years. Time goes by and you start to think: ‘Man, is it really over like everyone says it is?’

‘And I was in LA - where you are reminded every day of it. You’ll be buying cigarettes at two in the morning and there will be a line of five or six people and some jerk is going to go: ‘Hey didn’t you used to be in the movies? What happened to you? How come you don’t work any more?’ I heard it 24/7. I did nothing. I went to the gym, I did small parts in crappy movies. For a period of time I didn’t even have an agent.”

Rourke had to sell his motorcycle collection to keep himself going.

‘I had a motorcycle collection and I sold all my motorcycles. Then I had a friend, who was a successful hairdresser, and he’d give me a couple of hundred bucks a week to keep me going.’