Despite his 'years in the wilderness,' Mickey Rourke is a pretty well-connected guy.

Throughout our conversation he is profane, very funny and casually drops in a "Francis Coppola" anecdote here, a "Sean Penn" story there.

Mickey Rourke called in a favor from old buddy Axl Rose of Guns N Roses for the soundtrack of 'The Wrestler.'

In fact, in the course of our 15 minutes together,  he also manages to throw in references to  Dennis Hopper, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, "Chris" Walken and Harvey Keitel (the last four being his fellow alumnus from legendary NYC acting school, Actors Studio).

His friends are not restricted to the movie world either. During the making of his latest movie, "The Wrestler," the former boxer pulled in a favour from old buddy Axl Rose of seminal 80s rockers  "Guns N Roses,"  who lent him one of the band's  songs "Sweet Child O' Mine"  for the soundtrack of the film.

"Axl Rose is a good friend of mine and actually, when I used to box, I used to come out to "Sweet Child O' Mine," but on our $5.5 million budget we couldn't afford that music so he gave it to me," said Rourke, "So that was something really special."

Rourke was probably pretty glad to be able to help out. Director Darren Aronofsky insisted on having Rourke in the lead in place of the bankable Nicolas Cage.  Rourke's previous bad boy antics on set meant he was almost unemployable in Hollywood for 15 years and Aronofsky's choice caused the film's budget to be slashed by more than $10 million.

But Rourke's help on the music front didn't stop at "Sweet Child O' Mine" - he asked another rock legend, Bruce Springsteen, to write a song for the movie.

"I wrote Bruce Springsteen a letter," Rourke said, "A very personal letter about my character and about me and about how the character and me maybe had some things in common and would you think about writing us a song.

"And he wrote us a very f**kin' beautiful f**kin' song."

As "The Wrestler" is tipped for success in the approaching awards season, it looks like the former bad boy is finally coming in from the cold.