In this huge talk from Inquirer Entertainment, with "Wrestler" actor, Mickey Rourke, he talks about the character development of, Ivan Vanko. And He talks about what it was like coming to a big blockbuster such as this.
“I didn’t tell Favreau I was going,” he says. “I went over there for a few weeks and I went to the prisons in Moscow and I met with a prisoner who had just got out after 12 years and I was fascinated by the tattoo work that he had and some of the other guys, too.
“I was interested in the meaning and significance of the tattoos that they had because they are different to the ones you see in the States. A lot of the tattoos have secret meanings. For instance, there will be a drawing of a cat, depending on the size of the tattoo, which can mean different things in a prison society.
“There was one tattoo that I was very interested in and it was of an old Russian schooner and the guy had it on his belly and underneath, in Russian, it said ‘give me a blonde, a bottle and a boat and I’ll sail away..’”
“I tried to incorporate the whole Russian philosophy. It’s a culture of its own and I really enjoyed doing the research and meeting the people and they were very gracious there at the prison.
“The guards took their time with me, I talked to the guards and to the prisoners and I was very interested in seeing under what conditions my character would have been incarcerated for 20 years.”
“It was nice because both Favreau and Downey Jr both fought for me to get my deal worked out, those guys both went into bat for me and I appreciated that,” says Rourke.
“And then I spoke to Favreau and I told him, after I read the material, that I had some adjustments that I wanted to make and some character choices and he brought in Justin Theroux, the writer.
“And I said ‘well, I’d like to be able to speak Russian in the movie, I’d like to be able to use a Russian accent when I had to speak English and I also wanted to have a pet.’
“I was also adamant about not making him your typical, you know, lumbering kind of one dimensional Russian villain character. I said ‘there is no reason why this guy can’t be sympathetic at times…’
“I also wanted him to have a sense of humour. Yeah, sure he is going to be violent and unpredictable and all those other stereotypical things that you are going to have with a Russian bad guy but it was important for me to bring some likeability to the character.”
If you thought this wasn't deep enough, head over to
Inquirer.net to read the big entire discussion with Mickey Rourke on Whiplash.
Three more weeks til Iron Man 2's worldwide release, and a couple of weeks for some foreign viewers. May 7th 2010