Mickey Rourke’s astronomical payday for Celebrity Big Brother is revealed amid major fears that action icon could bow out of series early

Mickey Rourke’s astronomical payday to appear on Celebrity Big Brother has been revealed.

The 80s action star, 72, was the final star to sign up for the hotly-anticipated reality TV show, which is coming to screens on April 7 for just over two weeks until April 25.

And now, it has been claimed that Mickey is being paid a huge seven-figure sum to appear on the ITV program alongside other big names including JoJo Siwa, Chesney Hawkes and Patsy Palmer.

Mickey – who has an estimated net worth of £3.8million ($5million) – will rake at least £1million for his short time on the show, sources exclusively told MailOnline.

However, there are fears that the acting icon could decide to leave the Big Brother house early, which has been described as a ‘worse-case scenario’ for broadcasters.

‘The last time he was really big was during The Wrestler, and he like everyone else needs to pay some bills,’ a source told MailOnline.

‘So doing the show is a no brainer. He is likely getting at least a million dollars. He’s a producers dream because he has loads of stories, is a loose cannon, he is considered a huge get.

‘Producers always hope for the train-wreck but being a revelation works as well, if we see a new side of Mickey that could work.

‘The worst-case scenario would be if he left early. When he did The Masked Singer a few years ago, he eliminated himself.’

Mickey will reportedly appear on Big Brother alongside Love Island’s Chris Hughes, Olympian Daley Thompson, Coronation Street legend Jack P Shepherd, politician Sir Michael Fabricant and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK winner Danny Beard, among others.

MailOnline has contacted ITV and Mickey’s representatives for comment. 

Mickey’s Hollywood career reached its peak in 1986 when he won the leading male role in the erotic drama 9 1/2 Weeks opposite Kim Basinger.

Rising to huge acclaim, Mickey became a sought-after name in Hollywood with huge roles in Rumble Fish, Angel Heart, Francesco and Johnny Handsome in the 1980s. 

But the lead roles faded away as he dipped in and out of the movie business and boxing, turning down lead roles in Rain Man, Platoon and The Untouchables.

In 1991, aged 38, he became a professional boxer and fought as a light heavyweight, before retiring, undefeated, in 1995.

Mickey – who has two ex-wives model Carré Otis and actress Debra Feuer – was left with some serious facial injuries and underwent a string of surgeries.

‘Most of it was to mend the mess of my face because of the boxing, but I went to the wrong guy to put my face back together,’ he confessed to the Mail.

At one point, the icon was blacklisted in Hollywood for being too difficult to work with but thanked younger directors for helping to resurrect his acting career.

‘The young guys are cool. They don’t care about what they hear. They judge me by my acting ability, not my old reputation,’ he told Fox News.

‘I have a love/hate relationship with acting. I enjoy what I’m doing at the moment because I can give everything that I’m taught. I have my confidence.’

Mickey got his second shot at acting when he secured a bigger part with Sin City in 2005, a role he reprised for the 2014 sequel with Jessica Alba.

In 2008, he starred in The Wrestler, a movie about an aged wrestler who struggles to find a new life outside the ring after a career decline in a story with striking parallels to Mickey’s own struggles.

He missed out on the Oscar for the role, but said he knew he wasn’t going to secure the accolade because of his reputation, confessing he had ‘burned his bridges’ in Hollywood.

‘I stupidly said acting wasn’t a job for a real man. I threatened producers, raged at directors, forgot my agent’s name,’ he confessed.

Mickey – who was once at an equal level to Robert De Niro and Al Pacino – has previously discussed hitting rock bottom before his career resurgence.

‘I wasn’t a little bit bad, I was horrible for 15, 16 years. I was out of control, I was out of my mind,’ he told The Standard in 2012.

‘I had to lose my house, my wife, my money, my career, everything, for me to fall all the way down to the bottom, then somebody advised me I needed to talk to somebody. I resisted but I went, because everything was gone.’

He said he regretted that he had to ‘fall so far’ and ‘leave everything’ to change, but said he is a new version of himself after undergoing seven years of therapy – which saw him run up a debt of £45,000 ($60,000).

At the height of his fame, he would splash out on six Cadillacs in one go, paying in cash, and confessed nobody ‘knew how broke he was’ at the time.

‘Nobody knew just how broke I was. I was paying $500 a month for a one-room apartment with a yard for my dogs,’ he told the Daily Mail in 2009.

‘A friend used to give me a couple of hundred dollars a month just to feed myself. I’d be calling up my ex-wife and crying like a baby.’

Mickey admitted he threw his acting career away because he felt that he hadn’t deserved it, but he launched himself back into the limelight in the 2000s.

He has gone on to work on high-profile films including Man on Fire, Iron Man 2 and The Expendables as he tried to make a major Hollywood comeback.

Mickey has secured smaller roles in action and thriller movies in more recent years, as well as taking on producing roles in 2022’s The Commando, 2021’s Take Back and 2018’s Nightmare Cinema.

But Mickey has never been shy about voicing his candid opinions about Hollywood over the years and slated ‘irrelevant’ A-list action star Tom Cruise in 2022.

He criticized the Top Gun star during an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, saying: ‘The guy’s been doing the same effing part for 35 years. I got no respect for that.’