“I went to the wrong guy”: Botched Plastic Surgery Destroyed Iron Man Villain’s Greek God Looks
Marvel Studios 2010’s Iron Man 2 starring Robert Downey Jr. featured actor Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko a.k.a. Whiplash. The actor plays the character of a Russian physicist who is an ex-convict and builds a pair of arc reactor-based electric whips to take revenge on the Stark family.
Directed by Jon Favreau from a screenplay by Justin Theroux, Iron Man 2 is set six months after 2008’s Iron Man. Even though the movie received praise from the audience, critics deemed the movie to be inferior to the original movie.
But what caught the public’s eye was a significant change in Mickey Rourke’s face, and speculations about him undergoing procedures started to circle around. The actor finally addressed those medical procedure rumors, putting an end to all the speculations. Let’s find out.
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Mickey Rourke admits to going to the ‘wrong guy’ for a medical procedure
Known for having one of the prettiest faces in the entertainment industry back in the early ‘80s, Mickey Rourke was often compared to the likes of Marlon Brando and James Dean. The actor and former professional boxer, who played the antagonist in Robert Downey Jr. starring Iron Man 2, has been honest and vocal about how he has struggled with fame and how much he hates being a part of the industry.
Back in 1992, he said in an interview via The Things;
“You go through the motions of feeling it by you know the studio owns you’re a**, the public owns you’re a**. So over a period of eight years, you slowly lose your spirit in a way.”
After he appeared in Wild Orchid, speculations about his changing face started to circle as his cheeks were visibly swollen in the movie. In 2009, the actor admitted to getting under the knife to get his face fixed and explained to Daily Mail,
“Most of it was to mend the mess of my face because of the boxing. But I went to the wrong guy to put my face back together. I had my nose broken twice. I had five operations on my nose and one on a smashed cheekbone. I had to have cartilage taken from my ear to rebuild my nose and a couple of operations to scrape out the cartilage because the scar tissue wasn’t healing properly.”
It was noted that the actor and former boxer were advised to quit the sport, or he could end up sustaining potential permanent brain damage.
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Mickey Rourke didn’t want to play a ‘one-dimensional’ bad guy in Iron Man 2
Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash was the bad guy against Tony Stark in Iron Man 2, and the actor visited Butyrka prison to prepare for his role and suggested that he could take up half the dialogues in Russian. From the very beginning of the character, Rourke was clear that he didn’t want to play a one-dimensional villain in the movie.
According to the exposé by Vulture, the actor had specific demands for playing the character on-screen. The publication wrote that a source shared what the actor asked of the director and producer of the movie;
“I’ll do it, but I have to have my hair in a samurai bun. I have to speak in a Russian accent. And I have to have a bird on my shoulder.”
It was also mentioned that even though all of his demands were agreed upon except his salary, after which Downey Jr. offered a portion of his paycheck to help the actor. However, Mickey Rourke did not enjoy his time as Whiplash and reportedly appeared frustrated or ambivalent, but his impactful performance did have an ever-lasting impression on the audience.
