Mickey Rourke Distances Himself From GoFundMe Set Up In His Name

Mickey Rourke has claimed that he was not involved with a recent GoFundMe page that was set up in his honour.

Over the weekend, a fundraising page by the Oscar-nominated actor and former Celebrity Big Brother housemate’s management team, encouraging fans to donate money to spare him from impending eviction and “help Mickey Rourke stay in his home”.

“Mickey Rourke is currently facing a very difficult and urgent situation: he is at risk of being evicted from his home,” the description read.

“Life doesn’t always move in a straight line, and despite everything Mickey has given through his work and his life, he is now dealing with a challenging financial moment that has put his housing at risk.”

At the time the page was launched, his manager Kimberly Hines, and her assistant said they’d set it up with his “full permission” with a target initially set at $100,000 (around £74,000).

However, in a social media post on Monday, Mickey insisted that the was not involved in the page, and discouraged people from donating to it.

“Something’s come up that I’m really frustrated [and] confused [about] and I don’t understand,” he claimed. “Somebody set up some kind of foundation, or fund for me, [encouraging people] to donate money, like charity. And that’s not me, OK?

“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.”

Branding the debacle “very embarrassing” and “really humiliating”, he maintained: “I wouldn’t take a fucking nickel of charity from anybody.”

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter shortly after this, Mickey’s manager clarified: “The GoFundMe was done for Mickey. That money’s going to Mickey. It’s not going to me.

“And if Mickey doesn’t want this money now and decides, ‘I don’t want help, it’s like it’s charity’, the money will be returned.”

She added that she and Mickey’s assistant, Dima, came up with the idea for the GoFundMe, surmising: “This is good. It will help Mickey.”

“We said, ‘Mickey, there’s some people that want to help you out’,” she added. “He [responded], ‘OK, great’. I don’t think he understood, and now it’s taken on this media frenzy, and he flipped out.”

After initially rising to fame as a boxer, Mickey more recently made the move into acting, winning a Golden Globe and Bafta, as well as earning an Oscar nomination, for his work in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler.

Last year, he took part in ITV’s revival of Celebrity Big Brother, but was eventually ejected from the series due to repeated “inappropriate language and instances of unacceptable behaviour”.