7 Actors Whose Characters Die With Astonishingly Obscene Regularity

5. Mickey Rourke

Confirmed Deaths: 19

Of all the actors featured in this list, it was the presence of Rourke so high up that surprised me the most. While he does bite the bullet in some of his more notable roles, it never struck me that it was so regular an occurrence until I looked through some of his lesser known flicks. To give Rourke his dues, he was always rated as being a terrific actor-I can confirm that he always puts in a good performance when enacting death throes too. One film I didn't count amongst Rourke's 19 was The Wrestler. Although it seems likely that Randy is about to suffer a fatal heart attack at the film's conclusion, the ending is ambiguous enough that it would be impossible to draw a definite conclusion on the character's fate from it. Famous Examples Rourke made a lot of medium budget crime thrillers during his 80's rise to critical acclaim, many of which ended with him being shot or blown up-Johnny Handsome and White Sands being examples of this, with later violent deaths in Once Upon A Time In Mexico and Man On Fire continuing the trend. Rourke chewed up the scenery to fantastic effect as Tony Starke's nemesis in Iron Man 2, meeting a very definite end as he was blown to bits within his suit. Rourke also acted out a suitably grotesque execution scene as Marv in Sin City, the brutal reality of death by electric chair being writ large upon the screen. Most Memorable Death Scene Rourke was in the middle of his first purple patch in 1987. That year he had starred as IRA man turned mob assassin Martin Fallon, who begins the film by botching a roadside bomb attack on British soldiers and instead wipes out a busload of schoolchildren. Though he adapts a very questionable Irish accent throughout, Rourke is fantastic as the guilt-ridden Fallon. He finds absolution in his final scenes with the aid of Bob Hoskins' priest, and the relief and acceptance of his fate in his last expressions is entirely powerful and believable acting.