Rome, Italy, Aug 25, 2009 / 10:44 am (CNA).- Famed Hollywood actor Mickey Rourke, who was at the Sarajevo Film Festival last week, told a Bosnian newspaper that he thanks God and his Catholic faith for giving him a “second chance” in life to overcome his addictions, which almost led him to commit suicide.
 
Speaking to the Bosnian daily “Avaz,” Rourke said, “God gave me a second chance in life and I thank Him.” 
 
Rourke achieved fame in the 80s with action films and erotic thrillers. At the beginning of the 90s he left film for boxing and fell into heavy drug and alcohol addiction.
 
According to the newspaper, during the most difficult moments of his life, his psychiatrist and his priest were his best friends.
 
“When you fall people push you down even more. The world is full of materialism and envy.  When you are famous and you fall, people don’t want you to come back. It is almost impossible to come back. It’s hard enough the first time, but the second time it’s like you don’t even exist …God gave me a second chance, the guy upstairs helped me out,” he said.
 
Several years ago Rourke began his return to the big screen and this year he won his first Golden Globe Award for the film “The Wrestler.” Rourke was also an Oscar favorite.

Now, he says, he doesn’t think about Hollywood much.  “I don’t care about Hollywood and what the people of Hollywood think.  I don’t think about how it works because I simply don’t care. I don’t even dream about it.”

In 2005, when he began to land bigger roles in films, he revealed to a magazine that he was meeting often with his pastor in New York and was on the verge of suicide. “If I weren’t Catholic I would have blown my brains out,” he said.

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