Mickey Rourke at the Groucho Club, Soho, 2009
Dean Street, Soho, London · 2026
I am Charles Pycraft, a London photographer. Late on the night of Monday 20 July 2009, my camera recorded Mickey Rourke at the door of the Groucho Club on Dean Street, Soho, as he was leaving. The four frames here were taken over sixteen seconds, from 01:47. This piece keeps to what the files show and what is on the public record.
The doorway
The frames show him standing in the club's doorway against the patterned wallpaper, a phone pressed to his ear. He wore a patterned waistcoat over a white vest, chains and a cross at his neck, bracelets on both wrists and faded jeans with a pale belt. In the first frame he looks down, mid-call. In two of the others he looks straight at the lens, still talking, one thumb hooked into his belt. No entourage, no fuss, just a man finishing a phone call before stepping out into Soho.
Who he was in 2009
That summer Rourke was at the height of one of the great comebacks. His performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler (2008) had won him the Golden Globe and the Bafta for Best Actor earlier that year, along with an Oscar nomination. He had also agreed to play the Russian villain Whiplash in Iron Man 2, which reached cinemas in 2010, and The Expendables and Immortals followed.
For me, though, he will always be Harry Angel. Angel Heart is one of my favourite films, so finding him in a Soho doorway made it a good night's work. With the low light, the old wallpaper and the phone to his ear, that doorway had a little of the film's late night mood about it.
Dean Street
The Groucho Club opened in 1985 as a members' club for people in publishing, film and the arts, and by 2009 it was one of the fixed points of a night in Soho. Visiting actors in London for work or a premiere often ended up there. The files do not say where he had been earlier that evening, or who he was talking to on the phone.
The pictures
Four frames from the Groucho Club, Dean Street, Soho, in the early hours of 21 July 2009. My photography years ran from 1999 to 2014, and these pictures come from that archive.
Credit: Charles Pycraft / charlespycraft.co.uk. To license these pictures, contact pictures@charliepycraft.co.uk.