If we consider what nearly ruined Mickey Rourke's career in the first place; the reputation for being difficult, the bad movie choices, the plastic surgery that rendered him practically unrecognizable, it's fairly amazing to consider that Mickey Rourke might just walk away an Oscar winner this evening. Yet in a way, it's not: Rourke has always had the talent, he just couldn't seem to keep his shit together long enough for anyone to give him another chance to prove it.
But would an actress who went through the same struggles as Rourke even ever get that chance?

Though The Wrestler may be Rourke's greatest performance, he's still being, well, Mickey Rourke all over the place, giving wackadoo speeches like the one he gave at last night's Independent Spirit Awards, wherein he demanded that Hollywood consider giving roles to his friend, Eric Roberts: "Eric Roberts is probably the best actor I ever worked with, and I don't know why in the last 15 years ain't nobody give him a chance to show his [stuff]…. Eric Roberts is the [expletive] man. Like I got, he deserves a second chance, and I wish there would be one [expletive] filmmaker in this room that would let him fly because he is something else."

And where, as former Jezebel editor Jessica Grose points out, this is what he had to say about co-star Marisa Tomei: "I wanna thank uh, who else? oh! Melissa? Marissa Tomei. Goddamn she had to do all this with a bare ass and she brought it. Is she here? Not many girls can climb the pole. You understand what I'm saying? She climbed the pole and she did it well, and it was a very courageous performance."

Regardless of Rourke's fairly gross speech, Hanna Rosin of XXFactor argues that The Wrestler has a decidedly feminist edge to it, in terms of how it portrays the struggles of both Rourke and Tomei:

"Usually when the exploitation of the male body is a theme, the context is noble sport, or test of manhood- boxers face off like warriors, quarterbacks take one for the team," Rosin writes, "But here the context is pure exploitation. What's happening to his body is the exact equivalent of what's happening to the character played by Marisa Tomei - an aging stripper who can't convince any of her clients to buy a lap dance. The wrestler often refers to himself as an "aging piece of meat" and he is always objectified by the camera - shot from behind, or from the chest down. He's not a victim in the straightforward sense - the wrestlers are all very polite and discuss their moves in advance. But he is in the second wave sense - trapped in a larger system which gives him no other choice."

But in the real world, an actor like Mickey Rourke can undergo extreme plastic surgery and dress like an insane scarecrow and wax poetic about his dogs and forget his co-stars names on stage and be forgiven, due to his talent and ability. Do actresses receive the same forgiveness? If Marissa Tomei, who is undergoing a comeback of her own, wasn't still quite lovely and couldn't "climb the pole," would she have been cast in her Oscar-nominated Wrestler role? If she was the one who was known for extreme plastic surgery and erratic behavior, would people even give her the time of day? It's a strange but sad question that is, perhaps, worth asking.

So what say you, commenters? Is it easier for men to make a comeback?

Marisa Tomei's Quiet Comeback [PBS]
A Very Courageous Pole Performance [XX Factor]
Is The Wrestler A Chick Flick? [XX Factor]
The Mickey Rourke Show Enlivens Spirit Awards [Chicago Tribune]

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• Somebody really ought to tell Paul Reiser he's dead, because Wikipedia Never Lies! According to the professional nebbish's bio, "On December 27th, 2008 Reiser was discovered dead in the Squallahassee River where he reportedly enjoyed fly fishing. No foul play was suspected." These exaggerated reports have since been removed. [E]
• Neither we nor Benji Madden had heard he was dating Britney Spears. Unlike us, he presumably would care. "That one was news to me. My friend called me and asked if I was dating Britney because he read it somewhere and I was like, what?" [People]
• Speaking of Britney! Her brother Bryan is getting married tonight, to Jamie-Lynn's manager Graciella Sanchez, a woman with an unnaturally high tolerance for this family. [Perez Hilton]
• Amy Winehouse and Blake Incarcerated have a Norwegian court date set for January 12th, following last year's drugs-possession arrest. [Yahoo]
• David Beckham and his temp team, AC Milan, have been forced by "the ruler of Dubai" to cancel their New Year's Eve partying out of solidarity with the Palestinians. We're sure that went over well with a group of Italian athletes. [Mirror]
• And Becks won't even have any free Pepsi to drink! He and the soft drink have split, to everyone's satisfaction. [Reuters]
• Oddly enough, Cloris Leachman will be the grand marshal of this year's Rose Bowl Parade. She says she will not dance in the streets, will do the coin toss before the game with Penn State. [AP]
• Kevin Costner's county music career makes us sad and uncomfortable. And he clearly has no relationship with Bodyguard costar Whitney Houston. [Extra]
• Marisa Tomei's unwillingness to say Mickey Rourke was difficult to work with makes it seem like Mickey Rourke was really difficult to work with. "There were no shenanigans on the set. That's all I'll say." [Parade]
• Queen Latifah has been robbed of $10,000 worth of jewels while vacationing in Black Rock Tobago, news which Perez Hilton still manages to try to use to out her. [Perez Hilton]
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• 30 Rock sneak peeks: need we say more? Okay, then, Tracy wears a shirt made out of money. [E]
• DJ AM sets the record straight, sort of. "I want to take a second to address the hurtful posts and clear up any misunderstandings any of you may have about my law suit. I would NEVER sue the deceased pilots' estates or personal holdings. I am more than grateful that I survived this horrible accident and I'd never try to take anything from those that didn't. Despite the misinterpretations of the lawsuit, this suit is against the insurance companies that insured the pilots. I'm not after Sarah's or James' personal estates nor their property. Everyone involved in this suit has suffered a great deal, and I would not do anything to make matters worse for the deceased family and friends." It still doesn't really explain why you're suing but...carry on! [Perez Hilton]

• "It's not like she's asking him for details, but she's thrilled at the prospect of him moving on. It makes things easier for everybody," says a source. Meanwhile, Madge is trying to keep a "low profile" on her "friendship" with A-Rod. [MSNBC]
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• Rumors are rampant that Russell Crowe is clashing with director Ridley Scott on the set of the film Nottingham. A source tells Page Six, "Ridley is the only one who is willing to stand up to Russell and tell him he's too fat and that he can't show up four hours late to the set…[Russell] wants someone he can control." Russell plays the Sheriff of Nottingham in this new version of the Robin Hood tale. [Page Six]
• Though initial speculation was that Levi Johnston's mother, Sherry, was involved in selling meth, she was actually apprehended for selling oxycontin, otherwise known as "hillbilly heroin." She's currently out on bail. [McClatchy]
• Eric Dane is still not over the fact that ex-ladyfriend Lara Flynn Boyle was dating Jack Nicholson while she dated Dane in the 90s. "My take on the whole thing was, I'm 30. He's 70. This is not going to go down like this. I couldn't comprehend a 35-year-old woman gravitating toward a 70-year-old man . . . I walked away," Dane says. [Page Six]
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• "She's keeping it fresh for her customers. I wanted to do nipple rings, and (Aronofsky) said, 'I love it.' And I knew we were on the same page. They pinched them on and used eyelash glue. My breasts got a lot of attention that day." — Marisa Tomei on her role as a stripper in The Wrestler. [ USA Today]
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Time:

Aronofsky has been one of the few American directors whose movies upset the complacency of indie cinema. Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain were demanding and rewarding in various ways: the first wacko, the second gritty, the third sumptuously romantic, and all marvelously dense with imagery. So the big surprise in The Wrestler is that it's visually inert. Aronofsky's main camera habit is to follow Randy, just his imposing back, as he trudges through corridors toward another fight. (Martin Scorsese virtually patented that shot in Raging Bull and Goodfellas.) The trope does pay off later in the film, when the camera trails the briefly retired Randy down the stairs to his new job, behind a deli counter. But Aronofsky's main contribution was to lion-tame a jolting performance out of a forgotten hero.

USA Today:

Rourke gives the performance of his life. Tough, clueless and more self-aware than he lets on, Randy is excruciatingly sad. When he describes himself as "an old, broken-down piece of meat," your heart aches for him.

Slate:

Randy's relationships with these two women are what set The Wrestler (sparely scripted by Robert Siegel) apart from your standard sports-comeback drama. Wood has definitively made the jump from interesting child star to accomplished adult actress. Though hers is the most underwritten of the three main characters, she shines in her few scenes as the wounded, rageful daughter. And amid all the (granted well-earned) fuss about Rourke's comeback, I hope Marisa Tomei won't be overlooked for what I consider the single best female performance of the year, supporting or otherwise. She's smart, earthy, and astonishingly real in a role that could have foundered in cheap sentimentality. And if we're going to marvel at Rourke's sculpted (and no doubt hormonally augmented) 56-year-old form, how about Tomei's 44-year-old body pole-dancing in a G-string?

New York:

This is a case where an actor makes the difference. Mickey Rourke was once among our most charismatic leading men: alert, wittily self-contained (he always seemed to be smiling at a private joke), with a high but seductive voice. Whatever the hell he did to himself, it worked for Sin City, in which the makeup for his monster-man avenger Marv brought out the freakish poetry in his distended physiognomy. In The Wrestler, his face has that poetry without the makeup. Rourke has long blond hair that makes him look like a battered lion, and his tight, swollen mask makes Randy’s struggle to bare his soul even more momentous. It’s dumb, it’s outlandish, but smashing other people’s heads and getting his own smashed back really does complete him.

Entertainment Weekly:

Certain movies about losers have a special, desperately moving appeal. By showing us men whose lives have fallen dramatically short of their dreams, they speak to — and for — all of us. Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke as a broken-down professional wrestling star still clinging to his glory days from the 1980s, could touch a chord in audiences the way On the Waterfront and Rocky did. It has that kind of lyrical humanity. Aronofsky doesn't speak a sentimental cinematic language. Shooting in a grainy, bare-bones naturalistic style, full of jump cuts and raw light and a handheld camera whooshing about, the director of Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain now strips away all frills, tapping a classic Hollywood myth — a has-been looking for redemption — and, at the same time, transcending that myth. The Wrestler is like Rocky made by the Scorsese of Mean Streets. It's the rare movie fairy tale that's also a bravura work of art.

The New York Observer:

It’s a plot so familiar it borders on cliché, and elements of everything from Champion to Million Dollar Baby are inescapable. But there’s no denying Aronofsky’s commitment (gone are all traces of arty self-indulgence that have been his trademarks in junk like The Fountain); the tough script by Robert D. Siegel, which never begs pity for its downbeat characters; and especially Mickey Rourke’s raw, naked passion, which makes his galvanizing performance a real awards contender, and provides a jump-start for a career with a dead transmission.

The New Yorker:

What Rourke offers us, in short, is not just a comeback performance but something much rarer: a rounded, raddled portrait of a good man. Suddenly, there it is again—the charm, the anxious modesty, the never-distant hint of wrath, the teen-age smiles, and all the other virtues of a winner. No wonder people warmed to Randy Robinson twenty years ago. I felt the same about Mickey Rourke, and I still do.

Salon:

Whatever Aronofsky did — or didn't — do, Rourke's performance comes off beautifully. "The Wrestler" may not be the "best" Aronofsky movie in any technical sense. But the director clearly feels a great deal of tenderness toward his lead character, without ever emasculating him, and Rourke's performance blossoms and thrives within that affectionate framework. Rourke's face looks a little strange: He appears to have had some plastic surgery, which has made his features look both a little too fine and a little too blurred, compared with the Rourke we used to know. But that face hasn't lost any of its expressiveness. Rourke's performance will be praised, rightly enough, for the way he pushes his characterization of Randy right over the edge of our expectations. But what I love most about Rourke's performance are the small gestures, the little things he does probably without even thinking. The way, for example, Randy delicately places his hearing aid (this guy has clearly sustained so many injuries over the course of his career, you wonder how any of his parts still work) on the bedside table in his trailer, before going to sleep.

Newsweek:

Another actor could have played this wreck for easy pathos—a sad-sack giant in decline. We've seen that act before. But Rourke, underplaying beautifully, gives him a tough, tender humor that skirts the usual clichés of aging gladiators that go back beyond "Requiem for a Heavyweight" all the way to Wallace Beery. There's none of the actorish self-indulgence, that taint of narcissism, that sometimes marred Rourke's earlier performances. It's hard at times to even imagine this is the same guy who was the Hot New Thing in "Diner" and "Rumble Fish," his brooding intensity evoking the usual James Dean references, or the lounge lizard who specialized in soft-core erotica ("9 ½ Weeks" and "Wild Orchid"). Rourke, macho man extraordinaire, disparaged the acting life for its suggestion of "femininity" and took up a boxing career to shore up his self-esteem. He seems to have poured all those demons into this part and emerged with a new sense of himself as an actor. When screen acting is this pure and simple, it doesn't look like acting at all.

The Hollywood Reporter:

Although the film teeters on the brink of sentimentality, it never topples into the slush, and this is a tribute to the rigorous direction as well as the astringent performances. Still, there are mawkish moments: When Rourke and Wood visit an abandoned beachside emporium, a tear trickles down his cheek as he pleads for her love. "Wrestler" oscillates between hard-edged naturalism and stock melodrama but ends on an understated note of melancholy that seems just right.

Variety:

Talk about comebacks. After many years in the wilderness and being considered MIA professionally, Mickey Rourke, just like the washed-up character he plays, attempts a return to the big show in "The Wrestler." Not only does he pull it off, but Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances. An elemental story simply and brilliantly told, Darren Aronofsky's fourth feature is a winner from every possible angle, although it will require deft handling by a smart distributor to overcome public preconceptions about Rourke, the subject matter and the nature of the film.

'The Wrestler' opens today in limited release.

*Inspired by Shirley MacLaine's assertion that the best parts for actresses fall into one of the above categories.

• Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler: Tomei plays the stripper-girlfriend of a washed-up wrestler played by Mickey Rourke in this drama set in the 1980s. Stripper? Not the same as a hooker for sure, but close enough for our purposes. Also, something tells me that living with a pro-wrestler might lead to some domestic abuse. Just guessing! Verdict: Hooker, with possible undertones of victim.
• Gina Gershon, Love Ranch: Oh, my, GOD this is a must see! Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci are the husband and wife owners of a Nevada brothel (wait, it gets better). They fall into a love triangle with a South American boxer, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, a state senator also becomes entangled in their "sordid affairs." Gershon plays one of the hookers in the love ranch stable. Though I'm dying to see it, the Verdict is still: Hooker.
• Renee Zellweger, My One And Only: In this biopic of actor George Hamilton's life, Zellweger plays his mother, a fancy dame named Anne Deveraux, who is on an East Coast quest to find a rich husband. Verdict: looking for a man to bankroll your lifestyle? That's Hooker behavior through and through.
• Penelope Cruz, Elegy: Cruz plays the student to Ben Kingsley's horny old English professor. Reuters describes Kingsley's character as "charismatic and selfish," and for gods sakes, this movie is based on a Philip Roth novel! Verdict: Victim. Exploiting the power dynamic between professor and student is one of the oldest and grossest tricks in the book.
• Emma Thompson , An Education: Thompson plays the headmistress of a school in this story of a 17-year-old girl who starts dating a 35-year-old sports car driving playboy (Peter Sarsgaard). Thompson's character gets pissed because the girl is putting her chances of admission to Oxford in jeopardy by focusing on her new beau. Verdict: Thompson is OK! 35-year-old dating a teenager? Majorly sketchy.
• Michelle Pfeiffer,Cheri: Pfeiffer is in talks to play the title role in this adaptation of a Collette novel by the same name. She plays a woman who dates the wealthy son of one of her friends. According to Variety, " When he is forced to give up the six-year relationship after marrying someone else, the young man can't forget her and retreats into a fantasy world." Verdict: a woman so alluring that she causes her young honey to go nuts? This broad sounds OK!
• Kristen Bell, When In Rome: Kristen plays a "love-starved" New York City curator who steals magical coins from a fountain in Rome. The magical pocket change causes dudes to aggressively court her like they never have before. Not only does this sound like a blatant rip-off of Love Potion Number 9, but Bell's "love-starved" character sounds like your run-of-the mill romantic comedy heroine Doormat.

Tomei Joins Aronofsky's 'Wrestler' [Variety]
'Ranch' Wrangles Three [Hollywood Reporter]
Zellweger To Star In 'One And Only' [Variety]
Cruz, Kingsley Play Lovers In New Film "Elegy" [Reuters]
'Education' Gets Four Stars [Hollywood Reporter]
Miramax, Pathe Work Out 'Cheri' [Variety]
Bell In 'Rome' At Disney [Hollywood Reporter]