Mickey Rourke’s manager insists GoFundMe is real after he disavowed it

Mickey Rourke’s longtime manager has insisted that a controversial GoFundMe campaign was in fact launched on his behalf Sunday, as his team was frantically helping the financially beleaguered actor move out of his Los Angeles home because he owed $59,000 in back rent and was being evicted.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the manager, Kimberly Hines, said it’s become clear that her 73-year-old boss didn’t understood the implications of her and her assistant launching the GoFundMe. Hines said she certainly didn’t expect the public response over the past 48 hours, which catapulted donations to more than $100,000, or the media frenzy it would stir.

Whatever good intentions Hines and the assistant had, the attention clearly “upset” the actor and prompted him to go on Instagram Monday night to claim he had no knowledge of the “humiliating” and “embarrassing” campaign or who set it up, as People reported. From a West Hollywood hotel, where he is staying until he can relocate to a new apartment, Rourke said he would rather “stick a gun up my (expletive) and pull the trigger” before asking others “for (expletive) charity.” He also vowed to speak speak to an attorney and get people’s “money back.”

But Hines told The Hollywood Reporter: “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.”

The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets reported that the campaign was launched — with Rourke’s permission — by Liya-Joelle Jones, who was described as a friend and a member of Rourke’s management team. The GoFundMe page acknowledged that the actor’s “life never followed a safe or protected path.” At the height of his success — following star turns in such landmark ’80s films as “Diner,” “Body Heat,” “The Pope of Greenwich Village,” “9½ Weeks” and “Angel Heart” — Rourke “stepped away from Hollywood in search of truth and authenticity, choosing risk over comfort.”

That is, Rourke took up the “real and punishing” sport of boxing, which “left lasting physical and emotional scars, and the industry that once celebrated him moved on quickly,” the GoFundMe continued. It also said: “What followed were years of struggle not defined by spectacle, but by survival: health challenges, financial strain, and the quiet toll of being left behind.”

To the Hollywood Reporter, Hines described a frantic 48 hours, during which she and the assistant, whom she called Dima, rented a U-haul, moved Rourke and his three dogs out of his longtime home, organized a new apartment for him and put his belongings in storage. She added that Rourke doesn’t have a bank account and all the moving and hotel expenses were “being paid for by his management team, which is me.”

Hines said she and the assistant thought, “Let’s do this little GoFundMe thing. We’ll see what happens. This will help Mickey.” She said they presented the idea to Rourke, telling him, “Mickey, there’s some people that want to help you out.”

Hines said, “He’s like, ‘OK, great.’” But Hines acknowledged, “I don’t think he understood, and now it’s taken on this media frenzy, and he flipped out.”

When The Hollywood Reporter pressed Hines on whether the GoFundMe was legitimate and “100% intended” to benefit Rourke, she said, “Yes. And now it looks bad on us. Nobody’s trying to grift Mickey. I want him working. I don’t want him doing a GoFundMe.”

Hines said that none of the GoFundMe money has been touched and it will be returned, if that’s what Rourke wants. But she said: “It’s putting me in a very bad position where now I’m financing his move and the hotel and the movers and his storage. Mickey was cool with getting help the other day. And now Mickey’s like, “I’m not taking charity.”

Both Hines and Rourke, on his Instagram, described the dire condition in which he had been living, with new owners buying his house a year or two ago and raising the rent from $5,000 to $7,000 a month. Hines said the home was “uninhabitable” — covered with black mold and with no running water and no working refrigerator. Rourke, who said he lost work during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 actors’ strike, also said the home was infested with rats and that he stopped paying rent because the landlord would not do repairs.

If there was any benefit to launching the GoFundMe, Hines said that Rourke has received four movie offers from the attention it has received. “People are emailing him movie offers now, which is great because nobody’s been calling him for a long time.”  Hines also said that she would continue to be his manager, adding that Rourke wasn’t mad at her, just upset by all the attention.

“Nobody here has done anything wrong,” Hines said. “It was done with a good intention, with a good heart. My assistant is 21 years old. Right now, I’m fronting the money for Mickey to get him out of this emergency situation.”

The news about the GoFundMe certainly sparked questions about how Rourke could end up broke and facing eviction, considering that his films since the 1980s have grossed more than $1.9 billion at the global box office, he once starred in “Iron Man 2,” he has worked steadily for the most part and he earned an Academy Award nomination for his 2008 film, “The Wrestler.”

Over the years, Rourke gained a reputation for being eccentric and difficult to work with, according to a 2011 Vulture report. Rourke himself said in a 2012 interview that he wasn’t just “a little bit bad.” He said: “I was horrible for 15, 16 years. I was out of control, I was out of my mind. I had to lose my house, my wife, my money, my career, everything, for me to fall all the way down to the bottom.”

On Instagram Monday, Rourke acknowledged that he has “done a really terrible job” managing his career. He said,  “I wasn’t diplomatic. I had to go to over 20 years of therapy to get over the damage that was done to me years ago. I worked very hard to work through that. I’m not that person anymore.”

As he continued to insist that he doesn’t want charity and would see that people’s money was returned, he also said he looked forward to returning to work and expected that this “embarrassing” GoFundMe controversy would pass. “I’m sure I’ll get over it like anything else,” he said.