An emotional Mickey Rourke has urged Vladimir Putin to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During a lengthy interview with Piers Morgan, the actor copped to hobnobbing with the authoritarian leader and even wearing a shirt with Putin’s face after visiting with him in 2014. According to Rourke, Putin seemed like a good man while the two were visiting a children’s hospital in St. Petersburg.
“I looked over at Vladimir, and I could see somebody that was genuinely concerned about where we were and someone who was empathetic and he was there for a sincere reason.” Rourke said. However, the actor clearly doesn’t support what’s happening in Ukraine even if he’s still under the illusion that Putin’s heart will make him do the right thing. Via Mediaite:
Rourke said he wishes a “little bell would ring in [Putin’s] head or his heart and he’d wake up and just stop all this sh-t.”
“That’s the thing that blows my mind. It’s like two brother countries. I don’t understand what he wants, and it’s not only combatants that are getting killed, but old people are getting killed, young people are getting killed. Schools are getting targeted, hospitals are getting targeted. All that sh-t’s not right.”
As he continued to talk about the conditions in Ukraine, Rourke started to get teary-eyed to the point where he put on sunglasses after describing an emotional photo he saw of an old man who had just survived a bombing.
“He lost five family members and the only thing he had, it’s kind of hard for me to talk about it, the only thing he had was this little grey kitty,” Rourke said while visibly crying. “I looked at that image … and I said how can I have anything to worry about? Losing a movie? Or I’m having a bad day?”
(Via Mediaite)