Celebrity Big Brother 24 U.K. has not been light on the controversy, and Mickey Rourke was at the center of a lot of it during his brief time in the house.
Rourke lasted only six days before production decided to remove him from the game. On day 2, he got into hot water for a homophobic remark made to castmate JoJo Siwa, which culminated in him saying he planned to “vote the lesbian out real quick.” (Siwa, for her part, later said she identifies as queer.)
“I want to apologize,” Rourke said to Siwa after receiving a formal warning from production. “I’ve got a habit of having a short fuse. And I don’t mean nothing by it. I do mean it [sorry]. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t say it to you.”
“Mickey speaks from his heart and means well,” Rourke’s rep Kimberly Hines said in a statement to Us Weekly. “He is old school, direct and honest. I have worked closely with him for nine years and he is 100 percent authentically himself. There will never be another Mickey Rourke. Period.”
JoJo Siwa’s time in the Celebrity Big Brother UK house has made headlines and sparked controversy among viewers. The former Dance Moms alum, 21, entered the reality TV show house in early 2025, where she quickly found herself defending her sexuality. (Siwa publicly came out as queer in 2021 and is currently dating nonbinary TV […]
Four days later, Rourke left the game after a heated confrontation with Love Island alum Chris Hughes.
“Don’t eyeball me,” Rourke said to him during a competition. “Don’t f***ing eyeball me, c***.”
Rourke later apologized for his behavior, saying, “I did wrong. I apologize. I’m sorry.”
“I stepped over the line. I take responsibility for doing the wrong thing,” he continued. “I lost my temper, and I’ve been trying to work on it my whole life. And I wish I would have had better self-control. I’m very sorry. I’m ashamed of myself for losing it for a few seconds there.”
As the season winds down, see what Rourke’s housemates have had to say about his behavior on the show.
Mickey Rourke raised eyebrows when he entered the Celebrity Big Brother house and couldn’t stop staring at host AJ Odudu. The actor, 72, made his debut on the U.K. game show on Tuesday, April 8, alongside stars including JoJo Siwa, but his behavior with Odudu, 37, is what caused the biggest stir. “You’re very flirtatious,” […]
Patsy Palmer
For the actress and DJ, who was evicted on day 16, it’s what she hasn’t said that has spoken volumes. Following her ouster, Palmer did the exit interview circuit, but seemed to clam up when asked about Rourke’s behavior. Seeing the criticism, she took to her Instagram Story, where she wrote, “There’s nothing awkward about silence. It says it all!”
Rourke and Palmer sparred in the house when the Sin City actor criticized her cooking and when he made sexual comments to housemate Ella Rae Wise.
Ella Rae Wise
Wise first voiced her disapproval of Rourke’s comments while still in the house, saying in the Diary Room, “He’s making me feel on edge. I’m a young girl. I’m not a piece of meat. He’s making people feel so uneasy.”
After she left the house, she expanded in a discussion with host Ranvir Singh.
“I just didn’t appreciate it, and that’s all it was,” she said. “For me I just had distance from Mickey and that was okay. At the end of the day, it was one of those things and I didn’t appreciate what he said and that’s what it is.”
“I’m just glad that I’ve never got to see him again,” she added.
Michael Fabricant
The ex-politician was the first boot from the house, but in his five days on the show, he saw enough from Rourke to label him “completely unpredictable” in an interview on British talk show This Morning.
“Mickey would sleep with all his clothes on and sleep on the couch, I would pull out his radio mic when he was half asleep,” he said. “He was on another planet for the whole show.”
Fabricant continued, “He seemed to forget where the diary room was, he thought we were talking about a dining room.”
Bella Thorne called working with Mickey Rourke on their 2020 film, Girl, one of her “worst” experiences as an actress. Thorne, 27, leveled a series of accusations against Rourke, 72, via Instagram on Friday, April 11, as Rourke remains embroiled in controversy due to his recent actions on Celebrity Big Brother U.K. “This f***ing dude. […]
JoJo Siwa
Siwa is a finalist, so she’s still in the house as of April 25. In the house, she had no problem responding to Rourke’s comments about her sexuality.
“That’s homophobic, if that was your reasoning,” she said after his comment about voting “the lesbian out.”
Chesney Hawkes
The singer is also a finalist, and he took some heat himself from Wise for not standing up for her when Rourke made sexual comments toward her.
“I’m sorry that you felt uncomfortable at all ever in this house,” he told her. “It absolutely would kill me to think that you thought that I would not be a man and stand up to that. I’m so sorry that you felt that way. I really am, and I’m sorry that you had to go through that with him.”
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