Mickey Rourke: Watch your language!

One of the most underestimated American actors, Mickey Rourke, won’t speak English on the set of his new action drama Iron Man 2.

‘I decided to do half my role in Russian,’ Rourke told the Guardian.

The star of Sin City and The Wrestler will play one of the leading roles in Jon Favreau’s thriller – Iron Man’s arch-enemy Whiplash Ivan – and has to learn Russian for the part.

‘That's hard because the Russian language doesn't roll off the English-speaking tongue very easily. I spent three hours a day with a teacher, and after two weeks I know four sentences! Let me see, it's sort of like… 'Yezzamee menya… Yezzamee manya obott… Er, nemaboootty menya…'"

It’s certainly hard to understand Rourke’s splutter in Russian, thought he’s burning the midnight oil learning the language.

Besides his linguistic pursuits, to get under the skin of Ivan, Rourke has recently taken a trip to Russia. Randy ‘the Ram’ visited a Moscow prison to study the lifestyle of Russian convicts, as his character in ‘Iron Man 2’ has also served a sentence.