EXCLUSIVE: Mickey Rourke Opens Up About Abusive Father & the Priest Who Stopped Him From 'Blowing His Brains Out'

Despite all his successes as a screen fixture in the 1980’s, Oscar-nominated actor Mickey Rourke isn’t afraid to admit he was ‘a has-been’ who hit rock bottom in the dark world of addiction and abuse.

However this year’s ultimate ‘comeback kid’ has put his pen to paper and opened up about his harrowing childhood, descent into drugs and his one saving grace - his beloved dogs. Pop Tarts has obtained exclusive excerpts written by Rourke for the new paperback edition of PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's book ‘One Can Make a Difference: How Simple Actions Can Change the World.’

“My stepfather used to crack my head just because he felt like it. He was big, very big, and mean. And he was physically abusive to my mother. I hated the f***er for hurting her, for making her afraid. For years, I wanted nothing more than to take him down. In our neighborhood, there was some community services center set up to give kids a place to go and to keep us out of trouble. That’s where I first found a speed [punching] bag. To me, it represented a ticket to manhood,” Rourke wrote. “I couldn’t beat my stepfather, so I guess I started taking it out on everyone else over time. When I was an adult, I would fight everywhere, anywhere, for anything. Look at me sideways and you’re gone. I didn’t care about the consequences. I was drinking and taking drugs. But more than that, I was angry and crazy and ashamed of how I’d been treated. I’d been kicked around a lot, so I figured the way to fix this was to lash out.”

Rourke then lamented that it got to a point where he was “so out of control” that directors refused to work with him and he ended up blowing everything from his acting career to his marriage to model Carre Otis before contemplating taking his own life.

“I don’t like to talk about it because I still love her, but when my wife walked out, she said “You need help!” and I thought, “F*** you!” She was right; I needed to change, but I didn’t want to change,” he added. “But one day I looked in the mirror and I saw myself the way others saw me; I saw the armor and I scared the f*** out of myself … Instead of going to a therapist and telling him everything, and I mean everything, it would have been easier just to go to a priest, leave some s**t out, then have him tell me to say some Hail Marys and Our Fathers and that’s that! In fact, I actually did see a priest for a while, a great one who stopped me from blowing my brains out. We’d go in the basement, he’d pour me a glass of wine, we’d smoke cigarettes, and then we’d pray. But I needed a shrink too, so I forced myself to go. I had to learn not to let people push my buttons, find out what was triggering all this rage, and stop throwing things away. I’ve barely missed a therapy session in over a decade, and that takes willpower.”

But religion and therapy aside, “The Wrestler” admitted that his true savior was actually his six rescue dogs that became his own “little family” and taught him responsibility.

“I had to look after them and watch out for them, which meant I couldn’t do the things that were not good for me to do,” Rourke wrote. “I was sitting in a strip club in London a year or more back. Some drunk guy came up to me and started to pick a fight over something he’d read in the paper about “those f***ing little dogs you got!” I asked him to be nice. He got in my face. I stood up but I didn’t do anything. The bouncers came over and put him outside. In earlier years, I would have done him in. It’s not easy not to react, but I work on it all the time. I’m a work in progress; every day I have to remind myself to keep on that road.”

Levi Johnston Takes Jab at Bristol Palin in New Commercial For Nuts

Levi Johnston has been busy selling his story around the world, so it comes as no surprise that Bristol Palin’s baby daddy scored himself a job starring in a new commercial for “Wonderful Pistachios.”

The ad shows the “star” teenager, accompanied by a big and burly security guard, chomping pistachios as women call out his name. Oh, and of course a sly dig at his former flame was necessary.

“Now Levi Johnston does it with protection,” says the voice-over.

Charming.

Lindsay Price Injured While Filming Sex Scene in New TV Series

Lindsay Price has traded her “Lipstick Jungle” role to play a sexy witch in ABC’s new dramatic fantasy series “Eastwick,” but one spell she couldn’t cast herself off was getting injured while getting intimate.

“We’re in the fourth episode and we shoot fifteen hour days. There are lots of stunts and special effects and it’s pretty intense,” Price recently dished to Pop Tarts. “I did get injured - by strangely not from stunts but a love scene.”

As it turns out, the 32-year-old suffered severe bruising to her backside and tail bone after eighteen love-making takes.

“It was one of those classic sweep everything off-the-desk love scenes with a very handsome actor named Johann Urb. He’s incredible but heavy,” she explained. “But you can’t really prepare for filming a love scene, you just have to get in the moment. It’s very strange, you’re physically entangled with someone but its not at all intimate. Everyone from the camera crews is watching!”

But in order to film those not-so-lovely love scenes in Los Angeles, Price had to break up with the love of her life.

“I just moved back to Los Angeles from New York, it was like breaking up with a love I really didn’t want to end it with,” she added. “You really develop such a romance with the city. The day I left I hugged my dry cleaner, the people in my coffee shop. It hurt to say goodbye.”