Actor Mickey Rourke is crediting the Lord, prayer, and a faith leader who once counseled him for helping keep him on a positive path, proclaiming, “There is a God” during a recent interview with Fox News.
The actor, who stars in the new film “Man of God,” told the outlet he would have ended up living a very different life if not for his late grandmother, who was very religious.
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Rourke said he faced many challenges during his youth, but came to believe in a higher power.
“You either live in that shame and be a broken man or you get hard. I was very comfortable on the streets growing up,” he said of the difficult times he faced. “But there is a God. My priest told me, ‘God hears everything you say. He just doesn’t give it to you when you want it. You’ve got to keep persevering and keep communicating with him. You’ve got to talk to God before the house burns down.'”
Rourke recalled some struggles, mainly his brother Joey’s cancer diagnosis when Joey was 17 and Rourke was 18 — a time of trouble during which the family was told Joey only had six months to live.
Joey survived and didn’t pass away until decades later. But Rourke struggled to process that eventual loss, telling Fox News he didn’t pray for two years after his brother’s 2004 death, until he met a priest named the Rev. Peter Colapietro.
Rourke said he would talk with the priest on weekends and tell him he had no plans to pray. But Colapietro told him that everyone suffers and loses loved ones — and that he understood how he was feeling.
“I felt understood,” he said. “But it took me two years before I was able to pray again.”
Through the help of guidance and therapy, Rourke said he was able to overcome.
Watch the trailer for “Man of God”:
The actor also shared his quest to make movies that matter. “Man of God” is about Greek Orthodox saint St. Nektarios of Aegina, who performed good deeds and faced persecution. Rourke said the story has a lot of “integrity.”
“I don’t want to make movies where it’s just one guy and a machine gun killing 200 other people just because it sells,” he told Fox News. “That’s for somebody else. It’s not for me. But one thing I’ve learned is that everything’s in God’s hands.”
Read more about Rourke here.
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